


Like Clouds in Starlight Widely Spread

by ingberry



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Small Towns, Starting Over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 19:21:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingberry/pseuds/ingberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur thought he left his small hometown behind for good when his family moved away eight years ago, but an unforeseen event brings him back. At first it's like entering an eerie tableau of the past, but in the end, going back is what helps Arthur move forwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Clouds in Starlight Widely Spread

**Author's Note:**

> **NB:** There are two additional warnings in the endnotes. I put them there because I made a narrative choice in the beginning where the reader doesn't quite know what's going on and those would spoil it. You can check them if you want to, but it’s nothing major – none of the major warnings on AO3 apply.
> 
> \---
> 
> It seems I made it to the end! But it took a lot of help and love and encouragement from amazing people. So I have a million thanks to the following:  
> \- emjayelle for creating such gorgeous art for this. It's kind of astonishing how well your style fits the tone of this fic. It was meant to be :3 Also thanks for betaing and feedback and encouragement!  
> \- sonofsilly for suggestions and wrestling with my commas!  
> \- sapphirescribe for pre-reads and encouragement  
> \- giselleslash for perfect cheerleading  
> \- nu_breed for her perfectly nitpicky beta.  
> \- theaeblackthorn for the britpick  
> \- the rest of my twitter feed for word sprints and commiserating!
> 
> (I swear I actually worked on this story myself too XD)
> 
> It's been so much fun doing Paperlegends this year. It's a fantastic fest and I'll miss it. Thanks the_muppet for your modly deeds.
> 
> (Title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Hymn to Intellectual Beauty)

  


It’s unsettling how a place that is objectively alive and well, with a well-stocked corner shop, a beloved pub, a chip shop and a hard-hitting bingo league, can feel like a ghost town. Not because it’s abandoned or more lifeless than any other small place in Britain, but because it’s mostly inhabited by memories that have gone blurry at the edges. 

Morgana bends her head and thumbs through her phone while the neon sign of the chip shop they used to hang out in blinks behind her, flickers of red and blue playing in her hair. For a moment she looks sixteen again and Arthur looks away, bending down into the car to pick up the things he’d put in the compartment between their seats. 

“Alright,” Morgana says, and pockets her phone. “Uther and Catrina have been informed that the eagle has landed. My duty as offspring is done.”

Arthur huffs, straightens up and leans onto the open car door. “I don’t know what he thought would happen on the drive over here. The most exciting thing I saw was a black _and_ white sheep.”

Giving him a look, Morgana gets her bag out of the back seat and presses her lips into a tight line. “But you can’t really blame him for being worried, considering.”

Arthur makes a noncommittal sound and turns to look at the familiar street. 

“I mean, _worried_ is a strong word,” Morgana continues. She rolls her eyes. “But apprehensive, maybe.”

“I don’t know, for a moment there I thought he was going to ban us from going,” Arthur says as he shuts the car door and hoists his backpack up on one shoulder. 

Morgana rubs her hands together with a smirk. “But here we are. So let’s find out which one of these fine establishments we should grace with our presence.” 

He shakes his head as she throws her head back and laughs at her own joke. Her laugh is that ridiculous cackle that always makes Arthur’s lips curl at the corners. 

As they walk down the street towards the only inn in town, they pass the corner shop and a Boots that definitely wasn’t there the day they left. Wall to wall with the inn is the pub, The Tavern, where Arthur and Gwaine had fruitlessly tried to buy a pint at the age of 15. It hadn’t gone very well since the girl behind the bar turned out to be Gwaine’s old babysitter. 

Stumble Inn hasn’t changed much either. It’s had a fresh coat of paint, though, and there’s a new sign above the door with some whimsical assortment of colours and fonts.

“Looking sharp. They’ve kept busy,” Morgana says, and the step creaks under her as she walks up to the door. 

Inside, it’s bright and quiet, the counter abandoned. Arthur looks around and sees an elderly man he doesn’t recognise with his newspaper spread out over a table and an otherwise empty room lit up by the afternoon sun through the windows. Morgana gives the bell two sharp rings and takes a step back. 

“I’ll be right with you!” says a familiar voice, barely audible over the flurry of hurried footsteps upstairs. 

“Hunith,” Morgana says, her voice warm, when the woman comes half-running down the stairs, drying her hands on her apron. 

Hunith stops on the bottom step, her face lighting up. “I thought I’d never see the day.” 

Arthur doesn’t know if he can put a name on the feeling he gets when she smiles warmly, and not only because he’s always been fond of Hunith but also because it reminds him of someone else. 

Morgana tries to hold out her hand, but Hunith bats it away, using one arm to pull her into a hug and holding the other open with her eyebrow raised. Arthur goes without protest, and lets her press a kiss to his temple before turning to do the same to Morgana. 

“Oh, Pendragons,” she says as she ruffles their hair before letting go. “Look at you, all grown up and handsome.”

“And you look as young as ever, Mrs Emrys,” Morgana says, and Hunith laughs. 

“If only that were true, Morgana.” Hunith moves in behind the counter and rests her arms against the top. 

“I’m sorry we didn’t let you know we were coming. It all happened rather quickly.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. We’re expecting a full house, considering, so I’m prepared. I’ve even called in Gaius to help me for a bit. He’s getting on in years, but he’s still got his health, which we’re all well pleased about.”

Arthur feels guilty for all those years they’ve been gone without staying in contact with anyone. He knows in a vague sort of way what has become of people, but he’s never called to ask how they’re all doing. It isn’t a new guilt, he’s felt it for a while, and it’s only heightened recently. But he feels it keenly now that he’s here, looking at everything again for the first time since they moved away. 

“You’ll have to room together. I hope that’s alright.” Hunith slides a keyboard out from under her desk. Starts typing, fingers steady but slow. 

“Oh, that’s fine, we weren’t even sure if you had any space for us at all.” Morgana leans against the counter and peers down at the computer that had been hidden from view. “Wow, a computer, Hunith. You’ve moved up in the world.”

Hunith rolls her eyes, but smiles. “Oh, you know how it is. The boys all told me it would be so much easier.”

Her expression falters a little as she mentions the boys and Arthur’s hand tightens over the strap of his backpack. 

She follows them up the stairs, leads them down the hall and stops outside the third door on the right. Putting the key in the door and swinging it open, she steps aside. Morgana goes in first and turns around to elbow Arthur in the side when he follows. She gives him a significant look, nudging her head with a stern look on her face. 

Arthur realises after a moment’s confusion that he hasn’t actually said a word since they got here. 

“It’s great to see you, Hunith,” he says, his voice cracking over the first syllable. 

She smiles. “It’s wonderful to see you too, even though I know we all wish the circumstances weren’t quite what they are.”

Arthur’s phone vibrates in his pocket as Hunith goes back downstairs, and they can hear voices from below. He realises they’re probably all staying here, because the only one who hadn’t left Ealdor since school was Will. God, he really doesn’t know how to feel about them all being there, but it’s probably a selfish thing to worry about. 

He should’ve turned off his phone. He wants to. Desperately. There’s a text from Sophia, and he opens it with a sigh he can’t hold back. 

“What got into you down there?” Morgana says as she throws her bag onto one of the beds. “Hunith probably thought you’d gone mute since she last saw you.”

“Christ, I don’t know, Morgana.” He just stares at the text, not knowing how to reply. “It’s just _weird_. I feel like we took the wrong car and ended up with a suspiciously modified DeLorean.”

“Yeah, well, suck it up, brother. This isn’t the time to get all introspective and weird.”

“Isn’t this kind of exactly the time?” he asks, and peers out the window. From his side of the room he can see the blinking light of the chip shop. 

She looks up from her unpacking, and keeps her eyes on him for a moment before shrugging. “I know it’s a bad time for you, but this isn’t about you now, just remember that, yeah?”

“I know that.” He throws his phone onto the bedside table without typing out the reply. “I’m not an arsehole.”

Morgana’s phone goes off and she takes one look at it before she breaks into a colourful curse. “Fuck, it’s Uther. Why doesn’t he ever call _you_?” She runs her fingers through her hair, bemused. “I guess it’s because you never pick up, isn’t it? God, I need to start doing that.”

Since he has no interest in being included in this conversation, he leaves the room with Morgana glaring at the back of his neck and he has to stifle a laugh as she yells, “Yeah, Christ, I’m picking up!” at the ringing phone.

He descends the stairs slowly, and a mild wave of panic hits him at the sound of conversation from the floor below. To say that he’s ready for this would be a pretty momentous lie. They didn’t have many days to prepare, after all, and it was only yesterday they’d decided to actually come. So Arthur’s only had a night of restless sleep and an uneventful drive to think about seeing everyone again, to wonder what they’re doing, or if old bullshit will still be there between them to make everything awkward. 

He stops on the last step and is immediately struck numb by self-consciousness when the conversation dwindles to a halt. 

Merlin looks exactly like himself. He’d apparently stopped growing in school, because he seems about as tall as he used to be. He’s a little wider around the shoulders, though, and he’s grown into his features like people in their twenties tend to do. His cheeks have filled out a little, but the cheekbones are still prominent and sharp in a way Arthur’s never seen on anyone else since. 

When Merlin breaks into a smile, wide and sincere, it’s almost eerie. It’s like there hasn’t even been a day since he last saw Merlin grin at him over the table in the park where they’d bring their chips after getting off the bus from school. In reality, it’s been eight years, but who’s counting. 

“Well, you look familiar,” Merlin says, his smile crooked. “Didn’t I see you bunking off a couple of times? Pretty sure I saw you smoking behind the gym once.”

And, so, the first thing Arthur says to Merlin in about eight years is, “Shut up.” 

Merlin laughs and Arthur smiles back until Merlin moves towards him, tilting his head to the side as if Arthur is a particularly interesting phenomenon. It’s supremely awkward. Is he supposed to shake Merlin’s hand like they just met? But they didn’t just meet, so that’s sort of ridiculous. He doesn’t know if a hug might be a bit much, though. Maybe a pat on the shoulder would work. 

Arthur reaches his hand out and settles it on Merlin’s shoulder with none of the solid and confident air that he’d been going for. 

“You’re ridiculous,” Merlin says, a little soft around the eyes, before he leans in and wraps Arthur in a hug. “You always fucking were.”

“Yeah, well, I must’ve been to hang out with you lot, mustn’t I?” Arthur says as Merlin’s slight stubble rubs against his cheek. 

Merlin gives a bright laugh as he pulls away. “And there we go. I’m starting to recognise you, somewhere in there. Even if you got well muscled since the last time I saw you.”

“I guess it’s been a while.”

“Yeah.” Now that Merlin isn’t smiling his face looks drawn, and Arthur notices the dark spots under his eyes. “Yeah, it has.”

The silence is a little unbearable. Arthur isn’t normally averse to silence, but this one feels awkward and wrong. He speaks mostly to fill it. “It’s weird being back, though, right?” 

“Well, speak for yourself, I’m here all the time,” Merlin says, nodding to Hunith and Arthur feels like an idiot. 

“Yeah, of course. Get to go back to the house once in a while, that’s good.”

“We sold the old house a couple of years ago. Mum’s been living here. She might as well, yeah? That whole house to herself’s a bit much.” Merlin looks around and shrugs. “This has always been like home anyway. So, we’re all staying here, basically. Gwaine came yesterday and the rest are supposed to come in later.”

They’re all here, and of course they would be. Arthur doesn’t know why he feels so off about that. It’s not like they left on terrible terms. It was the usual teenage drama, he supposes, but all that shit _did_ keep him from staying in touch and maybe that’s what it is – just the fact that he feels ashamed for never reaching out and admitting that he missed them.

He didn’t miss them all the time. Not like he’d been sitting around pining for them and writing sad poems about it. But he’d think of them sometimes, wishing it’d feel more natural to make a call and just talk. 

“Good. Yeah.” He rubs at the back of his neck, unsure of what to do with himself. 

He fights the urge to wince, because it’s not exactly _good_ is it? 

“How are Uther and Catrina?” Merlin asks. 

Arthur pauses. “That’s a difficult question to answer.” 

It makes a faint smile pass over Merlin’s lips. 

“They’re as happy as I think they’re capable of being,” Arthur settles on, and Merlin ducks his head, shaking it in amusement. 

“You Pendragons are strange.”

Arthur swallows, the odd familiarity of them slipping in under his skin. He stays silent for a few moments before he coughs a little, pauses to think his words through several times and says, “Yeah. I do think my great grandfather signed our family into contractually obligated weirdness.”

Merlin is about to answer, eyes glinting, when Hunith calls his name and he looks up, eyebrows raised. “Could you contact the florist? They left a message.”

“Yeah, I’ll be right over,” he says before he turns to Arthur again. “I’ve got some things to fix for tomorrow. But I’ll see you, yeah? I’m staying upstairs as well, so I’ll be around.”

Arthur nods, and watches him go. 

He hovers around downstairs until he’s sure that Morgana must be done on the phone. She glares at him when he flops down on the bed, and ignores him until she can’t stop her rant about Uther any longer. It spills out of her with a speed that is, frankly, rather impressive.

The funeral is worse than Arthur had anticipated. Morgana’s fingers curl into the sleeve of his suit jacket, her mouth set in a tight line as she looks straight ahead. It’s been a long time since he’s seen Morgana like this: barely holding together her carefully constructed control. It makes everything more difficult than he thought it would be, because seeing Morgana’s bottom lip quiver before she bites down on it makes it real.

He’d never been close to Will. They weren’t enemies, by any stretch of the word. Arthur has always liked Will well enough, and they’d been in the same circle of friends because everyone from Ealdor in the same year at St. Joseph’s Secondary were friends (sometimes mostly by necessity). So it’s not that he’d ever had a terrible row with Will or that he’d even disliked him. It’s just that they were wildly different people, who never really crossed into being proper friends. 

That doesn’t mean Arthur doesn’t have a heavy knot in the back of his throat, though. Will had still been a steady presence in his life. They’d been close enough for Arthur’s hands to feel clammy at the thought of Will’s life ending behind the wheels of a smashed car. He doesn’t sob like Freya, he doesn’t wring his hands restlessly like Merlin does, but he sits still in his pew, giving Will’s memory its due respect by truly thinking about the temporary quality of life. 

He doesn’t think of it in an abstract way, or in a pretentious, lofty kind of way, really. He’s not getting all existential about it like a tosser. But he thinks he owes it to Will to at least realise that while they grew up together, shared birthdays in May, both of them fancying Vivian in primary school, and both seeing Hunith as a second mother, Will’s life ends here and Arthur’s continues. 

The phone he’s put on silent feels heavy in his pocket, reminding him about the life he has somewhere away from here. It’s a tangled mess of rubble and pieces of what was once the life he’d patched together from choices, mistakes and coincidences. And yet, it feels wrong to touch on that particular grief here where it’s so insignificant in comparison. 

Merlin looks thin and wispy when they stand by the grave, the wind pulling at his hair and his suit. And that’s strange, because Merlin’s never looked thin. He’s always been lean and lithe, and maybe even gangly. Once upon a time there’d been wobbly knees and arms that looked too long for his body, but he’d grown into those somehow. Even then, he’d never seemed frail. But at this moment Arthur wonders if the wind will take him away.

The sun has set and the sky is darkening quickly over the park. All of them could navigate it blindfolded if they had to, anyway. Arthur’s pretty sure he’s spent more time here than he ever did at home.

Merlin and Gwaine are walking ahead of the pack, and Morgana, who hadn’t left Arthur’s side during the entire wake, has joined Freya and Leon at the back. Arthur would say he’s walking with Gwen, but he’s not sure they’re walking together as much as they’re just silently moving at approximately the same speed.

“It’s so fucking weird, you know?” Gwaine says, turning to look at them, taking a few fumbling steps backwards. “The last time I was at that graveyard, Will and I were hiding out getting stoned.”

Merlin shoots him a look. “Of all places, mate.”

“Well, they’d started suspecting us hanging out in the park. It was either that or the garden behind June’s house, and I think we probably made the right choice.”

“If smoking up can be called the right choice,” Leon says dryly, and Freya scoffs.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “It’s what Will would’ve wanted. We’re doing it.”

“What?” several of them say at once and both Arthur and Gwen turn to look at her.

She holds up a bag with a crooked smile.

“Freya!” Gwaine says, grin wide. “Good girl.”

It’s hardly the normal thing to do. Yet this might not be the time for normal, because here they are: together for the first time in years, burying their friend and part of their childhood with him.

They have a need to be together, Arthur thinks. None of them had wanted to go to their own rooms after the wake was over, and they’d all sort of flocked together, hovering awkwardly around each other. Gwen and Morgana talk as easily as they’d ever done, but it’s still painfully clear that none of them really know each other anymore.

And yet they’re in this whole thing together, anyway.

When they reach the pond, everyone comes to a stop and falls silent. The moon is out, reflected in the water, and the wind from earlier in the day has calmed. It’s eerily quiet and carries a sickening feeling of familiarity.

“I literally haven’t seen this place in seven years.” Leon crouches to take a seat on the ground.

The grass is damp under Arthur’s hand when he lowers himself down. His jeans are immediately a little wet from the grass.

The silence between them is awkward and tense, even as the slow inhales of smoke seem to settle over them. Arthur hasn’t smoked since he left. He’s gotten drunk, yeah, but that’s something else entirely. He closes his eyes, listens to the rustling of the water and laughs because it feels like he’s two Arthurs at the same time: the one that never left and the one that did.

When he opens his eyes, the others are looking at him and he immediately feels bad for laughing.

“Shit, sorry.” He passes the smoke onto Morgana.

“No, it’s fine,” Gwaine says, his feet stretching out in front of him. “I just don’t think I’ve heard you make a sound all day. When did you go all shy and reserved? Must’ve been London that did that to you ‘cause back in school I could hear you jabbering on all the way between the labs and the toilets on the second floor.”

Freya makes a sound before she’s even inhaled properly and waves her hand a little. “Gwaine’s right, you used to talk a hole in my head. Your silence is right creepy.”

“I’m not _that_ quiet,” Arthur says, defensive. “It’s just...” He gives a vague gesture. “You know.”

“Okay, here’s the thing,” Freya says with her hands held out in front of her. “Today is terrible. This week has been terrible. But tonight no one gets to feel bad about laughing or remembering or feeling sad or _anything_. Everything’s okay here. Yeah?”

She looks satisfied when everyone murmurs their agreement. “Good.” She’s silent for a while before she tips her head back and looks up at the sky. “I want everyone to know that I feel really guilty. That’s okay, right? I mean, I stayed here for a while, we tried to make it work, but he loved Ealdor so much and I just wanted to see more. I mean, I know I’m selfish, but... it’s what I wanted.”

“It’s not selfish,” Gwen hurries to say. “I mean, you do what you have to, right?”

“That’s selfish, though,” Freya says. “I did it for me, not for anyone else.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s bad.” Gwaine nudges her with his knee.

“No,” she admits, inclining her head a little. She leans back and braces her hands on the ground. “I think he was happy here, though.”

Gwen nods and runs her fingers through the grass. “Yeah, it seemed like it. I saw him two years ago when I came back to help dad move.”

“He always did love this place way more than I did,” Merlin says.

Merlin leans into Freya and pushes her sideways until she breaks into laughter and swats at his shoulder.

“Where did you go then, Merlin?” Gwen asks.

“Manchester,” he says and inhales deeply. He waits a beat before letting it out, his lips curling at the corners. “Been there for a couple of years. Before that I was at uni in York, but it wasn’t really my thing in the end, I guess.”

Gwaine makes a face at him. “What, partying and hot dudes not your thing?”

“Fuck off.” Merlin laughs. “It was mostly all those annoying academic things in between. And like _you’ve_ ever been to uni!”

“I don’t need to be in uni to be invited to the good stuff.”

“I don’t even doubt that, you always had that absurd way of never missing anything. You were always there when shit happened,” Leon says, and the bitterness in his voice makes everyone laugh.

Arthur doesn’t catch Gwaine’s reply. Gwen passes him the joint, but he shakes his head, hand pressed to the vibrating phone in his pocket.

He meets Morgana’s eyes and pushes himself to his feet, his balance unsteady. The others give him questioning looks, and he takes out his phone, holding it up in answer.

“Hey,” he says when he’s gotten far enough away from the group.

“I can’t believe you left me in that meeting alone,” Sophia says with no greeting. “It was dreadful.”

“You know... You know I didn’t exactly plan this.” He sounds weird even to his own ears. His brain is a little sluggish and he mostly just wants to lie down on the grass.

“Are you drunk?”

“No,” he says, because it’s not even a lie.

“Fuck you, Arthur. I can’t believe you’re just out there getting drunk when I’m back here dealing with this whole fucking mess.”

He shakes his head at no one, and tries to get rid of the urge to ram his fist through a tree. “Jesus Christ, Sophia. I just buried my friend. Do you think this is some sort of holiday, or, what...? I mean, _fuck._ ”

There’s a sigh on the other end, followed by a slight ruffling. When she speaks her voice is softer, quieter. “I don’t. Of course I don’t.”

Arthur doesn’t answer. He looks over at the group, unable to ignore the curious glances Merlin sends him.

“I just hate this. I hate solicitors. All of it.” She sounds tired and he can picture the way she’s pressing two fingertips to her temple.

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

“Are you okay?” she asks after a loaded silence.

“I don’t know,” he says with too much honesty because despite everything, she might still be the one who knows him better than anyone, except perhaps Morgana. And maybe that’s the worst part of everything.

“I didn’t mean to yell.”

“I know.”

“You can call me whenever, if you’d like.”

He makes a noncommittal sound, not knowing quite how to respond. Especially because all he can think about is how much he wants to rest his head on the grass and roll around in it. Which is a completely ridiculous thought in the present moment, but it almost makes him smile anyway.

She hangs up before he can reply to her quiet “good night.” For a moment he just stands there with his phone held tightly in his hand until he forces himself to move.

When he gets back to the others, the conversation has broken up into smaller groups. He doesn’t feel like breaking into any of them, not even Morgana’s conversation with Gwen where they’re huddled close together. They sit cross-legged, knees touching as Morgana waves her hands in animated speech and Gwen throws her head back, laughing until her curls bounce.

Arthur flops down on the grass, the dampness of it soaking into his shirt. It’s a little prickly against his back and it tickles his palms. He closes his eyes and smiles at the way it tingles across his skin. When someone sits down next to him, he doesn’t know how much time has passed. He realises it’s Merlin without having to open his eyes, because he recognises the smell of him. 

“Do you realise none of us know each other anymore?” Arthur asks, keeping his eyes closed.

“I know you.”

Arthur shakes his head. “People change.”

“So?” Merlin says. “Doesn’t mean we don’t know each other, to some degree or another.”

“I don’t even know what you went to uni for. Or why you quit. You don’t know who I just talked to on the phone. I don’t even know where Gwaine lives, or what Gwen is doing with her life. It’s like the last eight years is some kind of alternate reality.”

Merlin huffs a laugh, nudging Arthur with his foot. “I know you used to be obsessed with Nirvana, but that you secretly listened to that _Backstreet’s Back_ song, or whatever it’s called.”

He even hums a part of it and Arthur doesn’t know whether to laugh or ask him to shut the hell up. 

“Oh god,” Arthur says, throwing an arm over his eyes.

“And Gwaine himself probably doesn’t even know where he lives.”

“Yeah, fine, so that doesn’t count, then. Gwaine doesn’t count.”

“Well, how did you know I was the one who sat down?”

Arthur pauses, and wets his lips. “Because you’re the only one who would.” He frowns. “And it smelled like you.”

Merlin laughs, and when Arthur opens his eyes, Merlin is hunched over, face split in silent amusement. Arthur sits up, his head spinning a little as he rests his arms on his knees.

“See,” Merlin says. “I know you. You know me.”

Arthur looks at him sideways and shakes his head. “Do you even realise how much has been going on in all our lives since last?”

Merlin shrugs. “Look at Gwen, yeah? She’s been throwing looks at Leon all evening, and he’s been studiously ignoring her. So they’ve definitely met since the last time we all saw each other. And Gwaine has a tan that I really doubt he got in England, so clearly he’s been out of the country.”

“Yeah, thanks, Sherlock.” Arthur rolls his eyes. “Making bullshit guesses based on assumptions is exactly what I meant by _knowing_.”

Merlin just shakes his head, quiet for a moment. He looks at Arthur, inclining his head. “It’s really bothering you.”

Arthur looks away. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

Merlin hums quietly. “Okay, how about this.” He turns a little, his knees knocking into Arthur’s. “You tell me one thing I don’t know about you and I’ll tell you one thing you don’t know about me.”

“This sounds like a trick.”

“It’s not,” Merlin insists, and looks way too amused for Arthur’s liking.

This is stupid. Arthur hasn’t planned to say anything about this. He was just going to come here to say goodbye to Will and then get back to his mess of a life in London without bothering anyone with his shit. He doesn’t even have to go into details like this, he only has to tell Merlin one thing he doesn’t know about him. It doesn’t have to be this. 

And technically, there’s eight years worth of things to choose from. There’s a million little things, really, like the time he broke his arm in a drunken accident, and the time he had to give away his kitten because of Sophia’s allergies. There’s the fact that he can’t have kids, and that his favourite movie is secretly _Muppet Treasure Island_ even though he tells everyone it’s _Inception_.

And even if there’s all of these things to choose from he says, “I’m getting divorced.”

Merlin’s smile falters and it’s clear that he hasn’t been expecting that at all. Arthur feels some sort of vindication in that, because at least there’s proof that there’s a lot they don’t know about each other.

“Shit, Arthur.”

“Yeah, I know.” Arthur shrugs. “That was my wife on the phone. Or I guess, ex-wife. It’s kind of in limbo right now. We were supposed to meet with solicitors today, but she had to go with her solicitor to meet mine on her own. It’s not... Yeah.”

“Well, now mine seems stupid,” Merlin says, sheepish.

“Don’t you dare hold out on me now.”

“I think I’d better.”

“I’ll tickle your ears.”

Merlin glares at him and then bursts out laughing. “And you say you don’t know me. Guess how many people know my ears are ticklish? Now that Will’s no longer here, that count is exactly two.”

Arthur looks at him intently until Merlin throws his head back and groans.

“Alright, alright. I’ll keep my end of the deal.” He tucks his chin into the crook of his elbow and bites his lip. “You were my first kiss.”

“What?” Arthur says, staring at him.

“Don’t you remember that game of spin the bottle at what’s her face’s place? Morgause?”

“Oh god, when we were like 12?” Arthur asks and he starts to remember. “That doesn’t count!”

“Of course it _counts_ ,” Merlin says, indignant. “There were lips touching. So. That’s the definition of a kiss, last time I checked.”

“It was a peck! Barely. Barely a peck.”

“So? That’s the same as saying it wasn’t sex because only the tip was in.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Arthur says, flopping back onto his back. He hits his head on the grass with too much force, but it barely registers.

Merlin’s odd laughter rings out. “Are you having a crisis?”

“Yeah, well, I always thought my first kiss was that utterly disgusting one with Vivian.”

“Well,” Merlin says lightly, “at least you traded up in the world.”

Arthur pushes him and Merlin sputters as he almost falls over.

For a while they just sit there and Arthur forgets to talk. It happens a lot these days, he’ll have to admit that. It’s not something he does consciously, as such, he just seems to retreat into his head and get lost inside himself. And right now, when his head is an oddly peaceful place, it’s even easier to just slip into it.

It takes him a while to realise Merlin is talking again and he zones in, trying to seem like he’s been paying attention all along. He notices Gwen and Leon are gone and the other three have grouped together, talking easily.

“This whole thing has made me think,” Merlin says, bending his head, staring at some spot between his bent knees. “You know? I was thinking before too, of course, but I just wonder what I’m doing with my life, right?”

“Yeah.” Arthur nods, because he knows. He does. “What are you doing, then?”

“Oh.” Merlin gives a one-shouldered shrug. “After I quit uni, I started working in a record shop. But we all know which way those are going, so.”

“Damn, yeah. You don’t have to decide right now what you want to do, though.”

“Well, I don’t know. Tomorrow, it could be me going the same way as Will.”

Arthur shakes his head. “You can’t think like that.”

Not answering, Merlin looks away for a moment, his shoulders hunched. “No, I suppose not,” he says eventually.

Suddenly, Merlin laughs, his face changing almost entirely from the seriousness it had held. “I don’t even remember what we argued about that summer before you guys moved? I mean, do you? It all seems so dumb now.”

“No,” Arthur lies, although he’s always remembered it clear as anything. “I don’t.”

“Don’t talk to me,” Morgana says as she slips into the passenger seat and ducks her head.

Arthur can’t keep back a laugh as she rests her head against her hand, closing her eyes. “You’re getting too old for this.”

“Shut up.” Morgana slumps in the seat. “Just drive.”

He turns up the music just to be a pain. When Morgana glares at him, he smiles innocently and says, “I love this song.”

“How come you look like you just had a night full of rest?” Morgana says.

“Don’t know. Never did have any problem with that stuff.”

“Well, neither did I.”

“I did say you’re getting old.”

She doesn’t deign to answer that at all. Instead, she just looks out at the town as they leave, heading out on the main road, away from Ealdor once again. Old Thomson from the pub waves as they pass, and Morgana raises her hand in response, following him with her eyes until she can’t.

“What are you doing when you get back?” She rests her arm on the car door.

Arthur shrugs. “Going back home, I suppose. Work.”

“Back to the flat?”

“Yeah. Where else?”

She gives him a long look. “I don’t know how you guys can take living in the same space. She needs to move out.”

“It’s not that simple. The lease is in both our names. I can’t just throw her out.”

Driving away from Ealdor is, if possible, even more strange than driving into it. Arthur keeps wanting to look back; he’s trying not to think about Will and Hunith and Merlin, but failing at it anyway. He drives a little faster.

“It’s not good for either of you, though,” Morgana says.

“I know,” he says and clenches his jaw. “But it’ll be sorted soon.”

Morgana hums as she looks out the window at the passing landscape. Her quiet starts to get a little disconcerting, because she’s usually talking more often than she’s not. And if she’s not, she’s often observing and calculating her next move, which is rarely a good thing, in Arthur’s experience.

“I’m gonna move back,” she says, suddenly, and Arthur nearly drives off the road.

He throws her a quick look, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “What?”

“I think I just missed it? I don’t think I did when we moved. I was excited about London and sick of Ealdor, but I don’t know, Arthur. I noticed it now, that I miss it. I’m gonna move back.”

Arthur opens his mouth to speak, but then changes his mind, shaking his head a little. Morgana, who likes to go to coffee shops with her friends, who always enjoys their father’s parties much more than he does, who likes working in her little boutique... He doesn’t quite know where this whole thing came from, but he knows better than to question her.

“Okay,” he says, voice carefully controlled. “What are you planning to do?”

“Old Thomson said at the wake that he’s not up for running the pub anymore and he’s looking for someone to take over, yeah?” Morgana smiles. “I know a fair bit about running a business, so if he can teach me some of the things that are specific to the pub, I think I’d be great at it.”

Arthur squints. The clouds have parted and the sun is out, making the hills around them bright green.

“You probably would be,” he says and she grins at him as she puts on her sunglasses. “But don’t for a second think I don’t know you’re only doing this to leave me stranded with Uther.”

“Busted.” She laughs, reaching over to switch the radio station. “No, really, that’s only a bonus.”

There’s something about Sundays. He’ll make a good cup of coffee and sit by the window, looking out over the city (which is mildly quieter than it is during the rest of the week) with the laptop perched against his legs. Down the hall, at exactly 5, Sophia turns on the radio to the show she loves and hums along to the songs, voice brittle and slightly off-key.

Sometimes she bakes and it reminds him of when she first started spending all her time at his place, filling the space with pop music, the smell of baking, her spare lipsticks and films with Colin Firth in them.

Today, she’s knitting, her eyebrows pulled together and her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she concentrates. He sees her when he goes to the bathroom, pausing in the doorway, feeling a bit like he’s spying on someone when he shouldn’t. He feels like he’s intruding in his own flat.

“Didn’t know you could knit,” he says and she startles, one of the needles slipping out of her hands.

“Oh.” There’s a catch of surprise in her voice. “Mary at work taught me during break. Been trying it out.” She holds up a square of blue. It’s a little uneven along the edges and she makes a face at it. “Needs more practise.”

“It looks good,” he says.

In another time he would have teased her, telling her it’d make a fine scarf for someone who was terribly lopsided, and she would stick her tongue out at him, promising him a Christmas full of mangled knitwear.

“Thanks.” She looks down at the square and flattens it against her thigh. “I heard Morgana left.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Arthur looks down and fiddles with the hem of his shirt. “She moved out Tuesday.”

“She’s probably the last person I’d expect to run off to the countryside.”

Arthur hums. “We did live there at one point, you know. So she’s obviously survived the hardship before.”

Sophia straightens and he knows it came out harsher than he intended. Her lips purse. “I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t.”

“No, I know. I was just saying.”

“It didn’t sound like you were _just saying_.”

And there it is: her face hardening, her shoulders tight and the familiar prickling anger in his chest, joined by the clawing annoyance at the way she sees every sentence as a jab against her.

He turns from the door before he can say anything, too tired to start anything that will only wear them out.

“Remember the meeting on Wednesday,” she says, even if that’s three days away.

He stops for a second, and says, “Yeah, I have it penciled in,” before returning to the living room, staying on his side of the imaginary line for the rest of the day.

“Father, she’s fine.”

“Yes, so you say. Did you check that she got everything settled?”

Arthur slings one foot over the armrest, shooting down the urge to bury his face against his arm and ignore everything.

“If she needs help, she’ll call,” he says and looks down at the brandy Uther has poured him. “You know that.”

“Damned if I do,” Uther says. He eyes Arthur’s position with a raised eyebrow. “I, too, know Morgana and if she has any problem getting that pub up and running she’ll set it on fire before she calls any of us for help.”

Arthur will begrudgingly give his father that point. “Well, I’m sure Hunith will call if the place starts smoking.”

Turning to look out at the gardens, Uther shakes his head. “Why would she even –”

“Don’t,” Arthur says, too tired of this dance. Whenever Morgana’s move comes up it’s the endless questions about why Morgana would do this, and the only conclusion Arthur ever finds in it all is that, apparently, no one knows her very well.

“Arthur.”

“Father,” he says with the same gravity. “You of all people must know the pull of Ealdor. You chose to raise us there, after all.”

Uther swirls the liquid in his glass. “Your mother did.”

“Well, you didn’t leave,” Arthur says.

“Didn’t have much to leave for.”

“Did you really hate it that much?”

Uther tips his head to the side, his lips pulled downward. “No. The two of you were happy, the house reminded me of your mother. That was fine, for a while.”

When Arthur doesn’t answer the room goes quiet, the loud ticks of the grandfather clock too clear in the stillness around them.

“I trust Henderson is working out for you,” his father says eventually and the mention of his solicitor makes Arthur slump further in his seat, wishing himself to somewhere far away.

“Yes, he’s been very helpful.”

“He’s the best.” Uther seems to sit up straighter the more Arthur slumps, as if they’re tied together by a string. “I was very clear when I asked around that I wanted the absolute best in divorce cases. He’ll get you everything that’s yours.”

“Dad,” Arthur says, and he knows he must sound tired because Uther looks up, really looking at him now. “I don’t care about what’s mine.”

“That’s careless of you. I’ve worked for what’s yours. Your grandfather worked for what’s yours.”

“ _I’ve_ worked for what’s mine.”

“Exactly.”

“So it’s my decision.”

Uther doesn’t get to reply before the door swings open and Catrina steps inside. She moves up behind him to put both hands on his shoulders. “Don’t get so worked up, you know what the doctors have said.”

“They haven’t said anything about having civilised conversations with my son,” Uther mutters, tight lipped.

She ignores him. “You’ll stay for lunch, won’t you, Arthur?”

“Absolutely,” he says, because it’ll buy him at least a few weeks of clear conscience.

“Good.” Catrina pets Uther’s cheek. “It’ll be ready in ten.”

Arthur excuses himself and slips off to the bathroom (the one furthest away from the dining room). He locks the door and splashes his face with water, mostly in the vain hope that it’ll help, but it never really does. It only makes him feel just as annoyed, except now he’s wet too.

He dries his hands on the towel and picks his phone out of his pocket.

“Uther thinks you’re burning down the pub,” he says by way of greeting and there’s a huff at the other end, followed by the rattle of glass.

“He would,” Morgana says. “He always did think I was useless.”

“I think it’s more that he thinks you’re stubborn and won’t ask for help if something’s wrong.”

“No, I won’t ask for _his_ help. I’ve already had plenty of help.”

“Good.”

“So, is he torturing you?”

Arthur puts the lid down on the toilet and sits. He’s not sure how long he can stay here until they find him. “It’s fine.”

“You’re hiding in the bathroom, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” he says, and slings one foot over the edge of the bathtub. “Got hailed down for lunch.”

“Remember,” Morgana says, voice hushed, “the fire exit is still installed below the second window in the library.”

“Oh, you mean that thing you referred to as... what was it? The Path to Snogging?”

“I did no such thing.”

Arthur smiles. On one memorable occasion, Morgana had ripped off half her dress as she escaped out the library window and his father had thought the gardener was leaving secret messages to someone (his father had a remarkably lively imagination sometimes, truth be told).

“Anyway, you can tell Uther everything’s going fine,” she says. “We haven’t opened yet, I’m still redecorating and fixing the place up a bit. Hunith’s been helping, and Old Thomson too, and Gaius has been showing me some things as well. They’ve all been great.”

“Good. I’ll have to see it some time.”

“Yeah, you better. I have paint under my fingernails.”

“The ultimate sacrifice.”

She laughs and he hears her move about before there’s a clang and a muffled, “Oh, bugger.”

“You okay?”

“Just... tripped over a chair. Again.”

“Sabotage.”

She snorts, and he hears the clang of glass again. “Listen, lad.”

“Lad?” He says, eyebrows raised.

“Shush, I’m embracing village life.”

“Fine. Lad.”

“I’m worried about you.” She stops whatever she’s doing and he finds himself holding his breath. “All jokes aside, you know. I am. Take proper care of yourself.”

The words are at the tip of his tongue. They come so easily, whether they’re true or not. He hasn’t been willing to look into that just yet. “I’m fine.”

“Yes, you keep saying that, Arthur. Just don’t let them run you into the ground.”

His throat clicks when he swallows. “I won’t.” He looks at himself in the mirror. “I have to run before they start roaming the house for me.”

“Yeah, you better. I’ll talk to you later.”

“What’s up with you today, Pendragon?” Edwin looks at him with raised eyebrows as Cenred wipes the table with the sleeve of his expensive suit jacket. “Barely said a word.”

Looking down into his pint, Arthur considers not saying anything. Maybe he can just get up and leave. It’s not like Edwin _actually_ cares, anyway. They just work together and go to Sky Fever (named by someone who makes terrible decisions in life if you ask Arthur) to complain about clients.

And yet he says, “I gave the flat to Sophia” and he doesn’t know why. Maybe he just needed to tell someone.

“Why the fuck would you do that?” Cenred says, eyes wide. “It’s yours.”

“Both names are on the lease,” Arthur says for what feels like the fiftieth time (he’d talked this over with his solicitor, after all).

“Fuck that.” Beer sloshes out of Cenred’s glass again and he stops, making a face. “You paid for that flat.”

Arthur shrugs. “I don’t want it.”

“You could’ve sold it.”

“I don’t want to sell it and know that…” He trails off, realising Cenred’s not going to have anything nice to say to that either.

But really, he can’t keep the flat just to be petty. He can’t sell it knowing Sophia would be left without a place to stay. They’re not going to be married anymore, but he doesn’t hate her. It’s not like that.

“You’re mad, Pendragon.”

Maybe he is.

He doesn’t pay attention as Edwin switches the subject. Instead, he watches the blinking lights from the dance floor, thinking about where he’s going to move and if he can afford a nice studio flat somewhere.

“Don’t listen to Cenred,” Lance says and Arthur realises Edwin and Cenred have gone to the bar.

He smiles, patting Lance on the shoulder. “I won’t.”

Lance is, truthfully, the only one he even remotely likes at work. He feels like he could’ve been mates with Lance, maybe, if Lance hadn’t started right as his problems with Sophia began and Arthur’s head was elsewhere.

“I wouldn’t have wanted that flat either. It’s good of you to let her have it.”

“Yeah.” Arthur finishes the last of his beer, circling the glass in his hand. “My solicitor said the same as Cenred, though.”

“I think that’s your solicitor’s job,” Lance says.

Arthur laughs. “Yeah, probably. My dad hired him. He’s the best in the divorce business or something. But that apparently just means getting as many things out of the divorce as you can.”

Edwin and Cenred come back with the giant champagne bottle that’s been standing behind the bar since they started coming here and Arthur settles for the fact that they’re officially _those guys_.

The flat is quiet when he gets in, tripping over his trainers when he tries to hang up his jacket. He gives up and throws it over one of the kitchen chairs. Making his way unsteadily towards the bedroom they still share in the most awkward of ways, he nearly falls over something that hits him in the knees. He rams against the wall side-ways.

There are boxes on the floor. The boxes are full of his things.

He slides down against the wall, sits on the floor next to them and takes in two deep breaths. One of them has books and DVDs, the others are full of clothes. It’s his life packed into four cardboard boxes.

He carries them down to the car, not bothering to check if everything’s there, and puts them in the boot. After he climbs into the back seat, he stretches himself out and falls asleep, too drunk to be kept awake by thoughts.

In the morning, he drives to Ealdor.

"And so I told her that's a bloody bad idea, but would she listen?"

"Clearly not."

"And the worst part is," Old Thomson says, banging his pint down onto the bar, "it seems she was _right_. 'What's a pub without darts?' she says, and I say 'a pub with no puncture wounds', but fuck me if they're not lining up next to that thing."

"But are there any puncture wounds, that's the important question," says Blake (who runs the chip shop), ever loyal to Old Thomson.

"Within the night, mark my words."

"Well, I hear those piercings are popular with the kids these days anyway," Blake says just as Morgana comes rushing around the bar and into the area behind it with a tray of empty glasses.

She bends in front of Arthur and he puts his hands up to give her the space, careful not to spill beer on her.

“Are you drinking on the job?” She gives him a look before setting her eyes on Old Thomson. “No one has been stabbed by any darts yet.”

“I’m not technically hired,” Arthur says as Old Thomson scoffs.

“Did you at least pay?”

Arthur doesn’t say anything, just buries his face into the beer and she shoves at his shoulder. “Wanker. At least work for it. Go collect some empties at the table by the back door.”

Collecting all of the empty glasses is a nuisance. He tries to pile them up in his arms and they wobble precariously as he makes his way back to the bar on unsteady feet. Barwork is probably not his calling.

When he finally puts them down with no incident, someone claps, slow and sarcastic. He turns around to tell them to fuck right off and sees Merlin lowering his arms, his grin wide.

“Of course,” Arthur says and Merlin laughs, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“How long did you practise those barwork skills?”

“Payment for the beer I stole.”

“What, you don’t even get free beer?” Merlin lifts a hand to his chest in mock shock.

“Yeah, I don’t know, apparently Morgana wants to run a business or something.”

Merlin’s eyes crinkle again in a silent laugh. “Do you have time to sit down or are you working all night?”

For a moment Arthur thinks he shouldn’t. It’s complicated, he thinks, and things are messed up. But in the end it seems like a bad excuse.

“Just let me get the beer I suffered for.”

It takes him a while to find it. Morgana thought it’d be fun to hide it, and Old Thomson and Blake are no help. They just follow his search with these really disconcerting smiles, like they really enjoy watching the returning rich boy struggle to find his drink.

Merlin is sitting alone by the table when he returns, and Arthur sits down opposite him. They’re lit up by the dim lighting from the walls, making Merlin’s face oddly stark and angular. He looks the same as he did back at Will’s funeral two months ago, but the shadows under his eyes seem a bit more pronounced. He doesn’t know if it’s just a trick of the light.

“What are you doing here?” Arthur asks.

Merlin crosses his arms on the table, shaking his head a little. “Well, it is my home village, yeah?” Arthur gives him a look and Merlin waves him off. “Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Visiting mum, mostly. But then I needed to check out the new pub owner, you know. It’s not every day people from school become business women.”

“And what do you think?”

“Sure as hell looks less depressing than before,” Merlin says, gaze moving around the room. “Cleaned up nicely. Plus, I think the owner is pretty great.”

“I don’t know,” Arthur says, curling his fingers around the glass. His beer is no longer as cold as it should be. “I’ve heard some shady things. I hear she gets high in the park.”

“Wow, how dare she.” Merlin half smiles, and raises an eyerbow when the men by the darts cheer loudly.

Someone hit bullseye. Arthur doesn’t know if that warrants the amount of excitement going on right now.

“So, what about you?”

Arthur turns his gaze back to Merlin, eyebrows pulled together. “What about me what?”

“Why are you here? Surely there are plenty of good pubs in the general London area.”

“Oh,” he says. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t expected it to come up. “I gave the flat to Sophia.”

“Oh damn.” Merlin makes a sympathetic face. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”

“My colleague thinks I’m an idiot, but I don’t know what I’d keep it for, you know? It’s not really mine, it’s ours.” He stops. “Was. Was ours.”

Merlin’s eyes are wide and dark in the low lighting, and Arthur feels almost scrutinized. Arthur shifts a bit on his chair, but doesn’t look away.

“Your colleague’s the one who’s an idiot,” Merlin says. “You’re never going to move on from something when you’re surrounded by it every day. Getting away is the only option.”

Arthur hums. “Did you feel that way about Ealdor?”

Merlin raises an eyebrow in surprise and Arthur laughs uncertainly as he rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Sorry, that was...”

“Deep? Yeah, it was. You surprise me, Pendragon.”

“I think that’s what they call a backhanded compliment.”

Merlin laughs. He puts his nail into the grooves on the table and follows it until the edge. 

“Yeah, I did feel that way about Ealdor. Too much baggage, sort of? I thought about you guys leaving a lot during that last year and I kept thinking you must’ve felt so free.”

“We did.”

“I know, I felt the same when I first left.”

Merlin pauses, and Arthur can’t help but feel like there are untold depths to that sentence.

“I felt even freer now, coming back, though,” Arthur says. “Which I know sounds weird considering why we came back. But I think...” He stops, looking for the words. “I think the thing that once made you feel free gets restrictive and you don’t even notice it. London was so big and endless with so many opportunities. And then the opportunities became limits instead.”

Merlin is quiet for a moment before he says, “Exactly” and Arthur mirrors Merlin’s small smile.

“I put my phone in the drawer the first night I got here and I haven’t even looked at it,” Arthur confesses. “I’m pretty sure I no longer have a job.”

“Good riddance.”

Arthur laughs. “I kind of need one for living purposes.”

“You’ll find another one.”

“It’s a recession, Merlin. It’s not that easy.”

“Don’t think about it so much. Something will come to you.”

“I can safely say that the world has never worked that way for me.”

“Maybe you should try it,” Merlin says.

“Why, is it working out for you?”

Merlin tips his head back and forth. “Well enough.”

“You’re an inspiration to us all.”

Making a face at Arthur, Merlin leans back in his chair and stretches. They sit in silence for a while. Morgana flits around from place to place, her hair in a kind of disarray he’s never seen. He likes it.

“You staying long?” he asks without looking away from her as she leans over the bar to talk to someone.

“Leaving tomorrow.”

“Ah, I thought maybe you’d stay,” he says and is a little horrified by the way it comes out.

“No,” Merlin says. “But I’ll be back.”

“Uther says he just wants to know whether or not you died.”

When he looks up from his book, Arthur finds Morgana sticking her head out the door as she covers the mic on the phone with her hand.

“Tell him I didn’t.”

She rolls her eyes and moves the phone back up to her ear. “He says he didn’t. Yeah. I know. Yeah.” Her expression clearly reads “I will smother you in your sleep.” He just beams at her to piss her off even more.

“He says he’s called your mobile a hundred times,” she says, not bothering to cover the phone this time.

“Tell him I threw it out the window on the drive over.”

“Yes, I know you heard that... I’m sure he knows how stupid it is that no one can get a hold of him.” She disappears from the door and he only hears the low murmur of her voice.

He wonders how many other people have tried to call. He hasn’t checked. Maybe he should’ve thrown it out the window. There’s no one he cares about that can’t get a hold of him in other ways.

The garden behind the pub is a mess of overgrown bushes and grass that hasn’t been cut in years. There’s a little stream beyond the trees, but the branches are too intertwined and the grass too high to see. He can hear it, though, trickling in the distance.

He sits outside on a dirty, old plastic chair reading in the tall grass. He found the book in one of his boxes. It’s the first time he’s even bothered to take a look in them except when he dumped all his clothes on the bed that first night. He hasn’t read this book in years, but it’d been sitting on his shelf, even after they’d cleaned it out two years ago and given a lot of it away.

He’d read _Gulliver’s Travels_ once when he was a kid. It was one of those picture books where everything was simplified until it was the bare bones of a story. Right after he moved to London he’d found the novel in a shop, buying it without giving it further thought. Ever since the first time he read it he’s been fascinated by it, at least fascinated enough to keep it on the shelf with the thought of picking it up again.

It’s something about how the novel itself is so decidedly not for children. He’d always just thought of it as a silly story, and yet this whole discourse of society and human nature had been waiting for him when he opened it. There’s this cutting voice to it, one that is fed up with all the bullshit of society and sets out to tell everyone what it thinks about it through the increasingly absurd depictions of made-up places.

Calling people out on their bullshit speaks to him on a fundamental level.

He doesn’t go inside until it starts to rain, and he turns the corner of the page down before he throws the book down on the table near the door out to the garden.

Morgana sits on top of the bar, kicking her legs slightly as she studies a piece of paper.

“What’s up?” he says and leans back against the bar.

“Doing inventory.” She doesn’t look up from the list, fumbles behind her for a pen and frowns. “You?”

“Reading.”

“Nerd.”

“Fuck you,” he says, voice light.

She laughs, looking up at him for a moment as she runs her hand through her hair to push it out of her face.

“Uther was really worried about you, you know,” she says. “I know he’s a pain, but he’d care if you died. And even if you haven’t died, you’re still going through things and he wants to know you’re okay.”

Arthur folds his arms over his chest. “I know that.”

“Do you really? Because it doesn’t seem like it.”

“Just because I know it, doesn’t mean I’m not going to do what I need,” he says. “I’ll call him eventually. I just don’t want to look at my phone right now, or even really talk to him about any of this.”

“Look,” she says and lowers the piece of paper. “I get it, okay, I really do. But he’s your father and he’s worried, and even if your life has taken a crap turn it doesn’t mean you can disregard everyone in your life.”

He doesn’t answer, just looks out at the empty pub.

“Tell you what. You can use my phone to call him one of these days when you’re ready and when you get tired of talking, I’ll cover for you and tell him I had to send you to deal with customers.”

“Fine.” He sighs. “I will, but only him.”

“That’s all I’m asking.”

He does call Uther eventually, explains about the flat and waxes poetic about how fine he is and how he’s just doing some “me” time. But the both of them probably know that people who are fine don’t just take off in the middle of the night, leave their jobs and their lives behind, to throw their phones in a drawer and ignore it for weeks.

In the end, Morgana comes through for him when Uther starts asking questions and panic rises in Arthur’s chest.

He only feels a little bad about it.

The park looks different during the day. For one there are a lot more people around, and for another it seems a lot less shady. He sees the school kids hanging around the fountain, just like they used to do, and he tucks his chin into his hoodie as he steps in the other direction to avoid being that creepy old guy staring at the school kids.

He takes his fish and chips to a bench not too far away from the raucous kids and sits to watch the life unfold around him. There’s an autumn chill in the air, but not enough to keep people inside, and Arthur just buries himself further into his hoodie as he eats.  
When he’s done, he wipes his fingers on the paper and tosses it all in the bin just a few steps away. The sun is peeking out from between the clouds when he takes out the letter that came in the post earlier in the morning.

Sophia’s loopy signature is already on the page, the S a little shaky, but then it gets bolder as if she became more and more certain as she wrote.

He doesn’t know how she found out he’s here. Maybe she asked his dad. He wonders how many unanswered calls he has from his solicitor, and with a pang of guilt he wonders how much stress he’s added for Sophia by going off the grid completely.

“You’re such a git!” A girl screams, high pitched. “Oh my god, stop it.” She laughs, though, as the bloke tackles her and pushes her down on the bench. “No, stop, it tickles! Josh! Josh, come on.”

Arthur listens to her laughter as he scribbles his name next to Sophia’s. His name is barely readable, but it feels easier that way.

“Bad time?”

He looks up, confused, and squints against the sun. “What are you doing here?”

“You keep saying that and I keep having to tell you I’m from here,” Merlin says, his smile crooked. “Next time, ‘hello’ will work just fine.”

“Just didn’t expect you. You keep popping up.” Arthur moves the sheet of paper out of sight.

“Morgana said I’d find you here, so. Sorry.”

“No, don’t be... I just, yeah. Sit?”

Merlin buries his hands into the pockets on his jacket and sits down, ankles crossed in front of him.

“You’re back soon,” Arthur says.

“It’s been a month!”

“Yeah, but you never usually go home every month, do you?”

Merlin looks away, shoulders hunched.

“I mean, come on,” Arthur says. “You’ve barely told me a word about what’s up with you. All we’ve done is talk about Morgana and me.”

“There’s not much to say.” Merlin shrugs. “Just life, you know?”

Arthur thrusts the sheet of paper at him. “If it helps, I just signed my divorce agreement.”

“Shit,” Merlin says, his eyes on the loopy signatures. “You okay?”

Arthur doesn’t answer. He keeps telling Sophia he’s fine. He keeps telling his dad he’s fine. He even tells Morgana he’s fine. But for some reason he doesn’t want to say it now. 

The lie gets stuck in his throat and Merlin’s eyes are unguarded for once when their gazes meet.

“The record shop closed,” Merlin admits, looking out across the park. “Right before the last time I was here. Been working up the courage to ask mum if I can live with her for a while.”

“You okay?”

Merlin shrugs and his laugh is a little hollow. And so, they sit in silence as the people in the park live on around them.

Nodding towards the kids by the fountain, Merlin says, “You think they know how good they have it right now?”

“Nope.”

“Look at them, all full of hope and youthful naivety.”

Arthur smirks. “You sound bitter.”

“I curse their idealistic hopes for the future.”

“You should become a teacher.”

“Wanker,” Merlin says, followed by a bright burst of laughter. “Maybe I should. I’ll do Shit Life Throws At You 101.”

“And what would be lesson number one, then?”

“I guess I’d just walk up to the blackboard and write DEAL WITH IT all over it.”

“Solid teaching,” Arthur says flatly.

Merlin just makes a face at him that looks completely ridiculous. They sit there in the park where they both spent their childhood and look at the kids who don’t have to deal with growing up yet. To them, growing up is still something to want, something to look forward to. It’s exciting. Growing up is freedom and adventure and making a life.

And then somewhere down the line growing up becomes about fucking up and fighting to make it right.

“Come on,” Arthur says eventually, gets to his feet and shakes off the cold. “Let’s go post my divorce papers and ask your mum for your old room back.”

“I’m expecting my acne to come back any day now,” Merlin says, swinging back and forth on the barstool. “I didn’t know there was such a thing as regressing back into puberty.”

“Your favourite song’s the Macarena, then?” Morgana asks while she fills up another pint.

“Shut up, my favourite song was _never_ the Macarena.”

“I seem to remember that one time at Vivian’s...”

Merlin hides his head in the crook of his elbow and leans onto the counter. “No, god, don’t bring that up.”

Arthur laughs and gives Merlin a push to the arm. “You had the moves, mate.”

“Gwaine had just gotten me shitfaced for the first time, I can’t be held accountable for my actions.”

“Oh, bollocks.” Morgana picks up a tray to collect empties. “You both always blame Gwaine and you were just as fucking bad as him.”

“Lies!” Merlin yells after her as she moves out into the room.

“What is she even saying? Gwaine is a menace.”

Merlin throws his hands out. “I know, right?”

“It’s all his fault.”

“Everything,” Merlin says with a tone of finality. “Especially that time we broke into school to get drunk.”

“And when we cut Mr. Peters’ phone.”

Merlin breaks out laughing, hunched over the bar. “Oh my god, what were we thinking?”

“I don’t even know, but god knows being without a phone back then was like the height of torture.”

“Oh, come on,” Merlin says. “It’s Ealdor. Mr. Peters lived within walking distance of everything.”

They keep talking about everything Gwaine can be blamed for, and really, the list is so long they’re still going by the time Morgana closes the pub and ushers the last of the lingering patrons out the door.

“I’m going,” Merlin says. He holds his hands up when Morgana starts giving him looks as she clears up. “You don’t need to kick me out.”

“Don’t be an arse. I’ll even let you sleep behind the bar if that’s what you want.”

Merlin rolls his eyes and jumps off the barstool. “No need for that.” He pauses, though, and hovers by the counter. “Hey, Arthur, can I talk to you for a second?”

“Technically we’ve already been talking all night,” Arthur says, eyebrows arched.

“Jesus, shut up and just follow me out, yeah?”

Arthur shares a look with Morgana before he follows Merlin out the front door into the cool, rainy night.

Merlin digs his hands into his pockets, his hair already soaked by the rain and it sticks to his forehead.

“I know this is like, a lot to ask, especially with everything you’ve got going on.” Merlin shuffles a little in place. “But I need to move out of my flat in Manchester before Tuesday – and I can do it alone, totally – but, you know, I’m already cutting it a little close, and I know that’s my fault–”

“Merlin.”

“–which is stupid of me, but I’ve been kind of avoiding it, and I–”

“Merlin!”

Merlin finally shuts up, his expression sheepish.

“We’ll drive up tomorrow.”

“Really? You really don’t have to.”

“Merlin.” Arthur shivers as the wet shirt sticks to his back. “It’s not like I have a lot of pressing responsibilities.”

Merlin starts walking backwards with a grin on his face. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

As he looks after Merlin’s retreating back for a moment, he almost laughs when Merlin takes an immediate left and disappears into the Stumble Inn. If this had been a movie moment he’d be watching Merlin as he walked down the street, but life is no such thing.

He’s soaked when he comes back inside, and he shakes the rain out of his hair as Morgana looks up from the till.

“What was that about?”

“Gonna drive with him to Manchester to help him move.”

She hums. “You guys ever planning to talk about the argument you had before we left?”

“We never had an argument,” he says, and it’s true: they didn’t.

“Well, maybe you didn’t argue, but you’re not delusional enough to think everything was peachy when we left?” She pushes the till closed. “If it had been, you’d’ve kept in touch.”

“It’s fine.”

“Yeah. I’m sure it is.”

They take Merlin’s car even if it’s an old Ford Focus that has, quite frankly, seen better days. Merlin rubs the dashboard as they head onto the A17. Whe radio suddenly starts up, he gives a pleased grin.

“Is this thing alive?” Arthur asks, dubious.

“His name is Johan.”

Arthur groans. “God, you’re a walking cliché.”

“Hey,” Merlin says, a little indignant. “It’s a rite of passage to name your first car.”

“Yeah, do you know what I named my first car?” Arthur stretches his legs as far as they’ll go. “Car."

“Imaginative.”

The radio changes stations and Arthur leans away from it. “Okay, what the fuck is up with this thing?”

“Johan has been living a life of his own for a while now.”

“And this doesn’t concern you?” Arthur says as the new station starts spitting out hits that are too old to be new and too new to be nostalgic.

It starts raining again as they speed ahead. Merlin's fingers drum against the steering wheel, rhythm aligning with the steady beat of rain. “Least of my concerns, to be honest.”

There’s not much to say to that because Merlin is right, of course. A car taking on a life as a sentient being doesn’t really hold a candle to a dead childhood best friend and having to move out of your flat because your place of work went out of business.  
“Did you know,” Merlin says, when the silence apparently gets unbearable, “that bubble wrap was originally invented to be used as wallpaper?”

Arthur stares at him. Maybe this trip was a terrible idea. “Oh god, how long do we have left?”

“‘Bout two hours and fifty minutes.” Merlin keeps his eyes on the road. “I’m disappointed in your disinterest in bubble wrap.”

“How do you even sit on a well of bubble wrap knowledge?”

“I don’t know. I kinda like useless trivia. It’s so much more fun knowing things when you don’t have to know them.”

“Even if you can never use it for anything?”

“ _Especially_ because I can never use it for anything.” Merlin reaches forwards and bangs the side of the car stereo. It makes a scratchy noise and something shifts inside. Arthur realises it’s a tape player. “I like the thought that it just sits there. Like my brain just stores all these things, you know, even if I’ll never need them. It’s like infinite storage. Never gonna need an external hard drive. Oh!”

The tape starts mid-song and Merlin beams.

“Is this _Smells Like Teen Spirit_?” Arthur asks, his smile reluctant.

“Came with the car.” Merlin laughs. “Never figured out how to change the tape.”

“This is going to be the longest car ride of my life.”

“If by longest you mean Most Brilliant Road Trip Currently Passing Near the Wonderful Town of Spalding, then yes.”

Merlin’s place is a one-room flat in Withington. It’s nice but cluttered, with books and DVDs everywhere. He’d obviously not bothered to tidy up before he left for Ealdor.

“Sorry ‘bout the mess,” Merlin says as they carry inside the haul they’d stopped for earlier: boxes for storage and a whole bag of cleaning supplies

“I don’t usually have company over, and when I do it’s after dark and they leave before morning.”

Arthur looks at him over his shoulder with arched eyebrows and Merlin breaks into a grin. 

“I’m just kidding. Well, half-kidding.”

They start cleaning up immediately. It doesn’t seem necessary to spend any time hovering around. They ate at Hunters BBQ as soon as they got to Manchester, so there are no excuses.

The Merlin from the drive over seems to disappear in the small flat. He grows quiet as he picks his DVDs from the shelves, working through them methodically without so much as a single bit of useless trivia. Arthur doesn’t push it. Instead, he just studies the things he packs into the box labeled “kitchen”. There’s a mug that says _World’s Best Grandpa_ and a tea cozy shaped like a snail.

Arthur can’t help but think that he doesn’t know this Merlin. He feels like he knows parts of Merlin to varying degrees. He truly knows the Merlin from Ealdor who looked like a skinny, innocent kid but who was the mastermind behind their bullshit at least half the time. And he knows parts of the Merlin who moved back to Ealdor because the record shop closed, the one who doesn’t open up all that much, but who likes useless trivia and is terrible at darts.

But he doesn’t know the Merlin who lived in this flat for god knows how long.  
It’s strange to know that they’re both missing eight years of each other’s lives. Those years are like black holes, or alternate realities, maybe. Or like pages of a book that were ripped out.

It’s like every little thing he puts into the box is another little piece of the pages, like if he put them together in the right order he’d know the story.

They take a break to flick through the channels even if there’s nothing on worth watching.  
Merlin’s found a single pack of noodles that they share between them with the only two forks left in the kitchen drawer. In the end they find a rerun of Deal or No Deal and spend the time arguing about whether it’s the £75,000 or the £100 left in the box.

It’s the £100 and Merlin lords it over his head for the rest of the afternoon.

Arthur appreciates his little trip into the land of Merlin. It’s like a treasure hunt where the haul is a tattered copy of _The Hobbit_ and an abnormal amount of Trivial Pursuit games.

He’s tidying in the shelves by the TV when Merlin suddenly laughs, bright and unrestrained, somewhere in the bedroom (or the place where the bed is sectioned off with a sliding panel, at the very least).

“Forgot I had this,” he says into a bag of what is definitely weed. “Think I bought this for my birthday but then never ended up using it.”

And that’s how they end up lying on the floor listening to Dexys Midnight Runners. Arthur always thought they only had those two songs, _Come On Eileen_ and that other one, but Merlin sets him straight.

“It’s tragic,” Merlin says and exhales slowly. “Everyone’s forgotten that they made brilliant music, not just that one 80s song with the weird music video.”

“I don’t know if that’s the most tragic thing I’ve ever heard.” Arthur feels his fingertips, like… more than he usually does. He lets them run over the floor, back and forth.

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Merlin passes him the joint.

“I should tell my dad you’re a terrible influence on me,” Arthur says between drags.

“Yeah, well, he always did think that anyway.”

Merlin’s expression doesn’t reveal anything when Arthur turns to look at him. It remains carefully blank.

“He didn’t.”

“Come on. I was a troublemaking gay kid who liked to get stoned.”

“Yeah, but Uther only knew one of those things.” Arthur starts to understand the appeal of Dexys Midnight Runners. The music seems to vibrate through the floor. “Every adult ever thought you were a paragon of innocence.”

“So why’d he pick you up and leave, then?”

Arthur takes a while to catch up. “What? Because of Catrina. And because Ealdor reminded him too much of Mum. It had nothing to do with you – any of you.”

Merlin’s quiet, staring up at the ceiling before he says, “Do you ever wonder if it’d been different if you guys had never gone?”

“Yeah.”

Turning onto his side, Merlin curls up and tucks an arm under his head. “Things were weird between us when you left.”

“God, yeah, I know. It was stupid.”

“I know I said I didn’t remember, but it’s hard to forget.”

“I never believed those rumours, really,” Arthur says. He closes his eyes as the music seems to thrum through him. “I mean, I knew you didn’t fancy me. Just cause you came out, it doesn’t mean you fancied every single one of your mates.”

“Yeah.” Merlin pauses. “I didn’t fancy you. Had a pretty huge crush on Percy actually. I felt so fucking weird about it, though, thinking you thought I was pining after you all those years. It was so awkward.”

“Hey, well. I didn’t even tell you I didn’t believe them. Cause I figured, you know, what if he actually does and everything goes to shit.”

It gets so quiet Arthur almost falls asleep. He nearly jumps when Merlin says, “Fuck that shit, that was years ago.”

Arthur turns onto his side as well. Merlin takes the joint from between his fingers and closes his lips around it as Arthur watches closely. He thinks about the eight years where Merlin existed without him. It’s strange to think about lives going on elsewhere, separate from him. When he leaves, things continue to happen anyway – to everyone. It’s not like a film where things just don’t seem to happen if you can’t see them.

Merlin removes the joint from between his lips, leans closer, and opens his mouth wide. He’s so close to Arthur’s that Arthur can feel the warmth of him. Catching on, he parts his own lips so Merlin can exhale in the space between them. The smoke fills Arthur’s lungs. It’s been a long time since he kissed someone. It’s been even longer since he kissed someone and it mattered.

The closeness of Merlin’s mouth is somehow the most significant intimacy he’s felt in forever. It’s like the gap doesn’t even matter. Merlin’s lips aren’t touching his, but they might as well be.

Merlin leans back and laughs, his limbs spread wide on the floor. The CD ends. “Shit, I’m leaving Manchester. This is fucking mad, Arthur.”

As he gathers his thoughts, Arthur looks at Merlin lying limply on the floor just like the noodles they’d had for dinner. “Was it really that great?”

“I don’t know,” Merlin says. “Some of it.”

“There’ll be other great things.”

Merlin hums thoughtfully before he starts rolling across the floor to get to the one bottle of coke they have left.

Arthur laughs until he can’t breathe.

They stack Johan full of boxes – in the boot, in the back seat, and on Arthur’s lap – and start the drive back to Ealdor as soon as Merlin has handed over the keys to the flat.

They don’t talk about the smoking, mostly because they don’t have to. It’s not because it’s awkward or weird, it just is.

“Eat up,” Hunith says. Her gaze is a little terrifying. It’s as if she dares him to defy.

“Mum.” Merlin sighs. “Don’t force-feed them.”

“They’re our guests,” she says simply, clearly laying the matter to rest.

Morgana leans forwards for another helping of pie. “Thank you, Hunith.” She elbows Arthur sharply. 

Merlin rolls his eyes at the both of them and turns to Arthur with an exaggerated smile. “May I offer you some bread rolls?”

“Don’t be facetious, Merlin.”

Arthur snorts, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth as Merlin throws his hands out in frustration. 

“How’s your father?” Hunith asks Morgana, thankfully distracting her from getting angry about his table manners. 

“Oh, he’s doing well. Catrina looks after him.” Morgana puts her fork down. “Arthur saw him last, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, he looked well.”

Hunith smiles. “Does he still read?” 

He shares a look of confusion with Morgana. 

“He used to be so fond of reading. I remember he would borrow some of mine if he ever ran out. And he’d always stay behind and discuss the book with me when he returned it.” Hunith laughs. “Oh, I remember how he hated Joseph Conrad. Once, _The Rover_ was the only book I had at the moment that he hadn’t read, but he still took it and then kept me for thirty minutes ranting about it when he handed it back.”

“I don’t know if he reads,” Morgana says, a little hushed. “I suppose he does.”

Hunith launches into a story, but Arthur loses track of it as he watches Morgana’s expression. Uther had never been good at sharing of himself with his children, and least of all with Morgana, because Uther was traditional in that sense. He could pass on _boy_ things to Arthur, but he had this idea that he couldn’t possibly have anything in common with Morgana that she might want to listen to. 

He lets the two of them talk and turns to Merlin, who’s eating pie like it’s a religious experience. Merlin drags the fork between his pursed lips and smacks them happily. 

“So,” he says, picking off another piece of his slice. “Did you know the word nostalgia comes from two Greek words meaning ‘returning home’ and ‘pain’?”

Arthur arches his eyebrow. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“I’m always trying to tell you something.”

“Christ. Well, I guess that makes sense,” Arthur says. “Nostalgia is kind of about home, and it’s not really a pleasant feeling, is it?”

“Yeah, but have you noticed that whenever you get back to the thing you were nostalgic about, you get nostalgic about something else instead?”

“You can’t very well be nostalgic about something you’re currently experiencing, though,” Arthur says, breaking off a piece of the bread roll Merlin had offered him in a less sarcastic way after his mum had told him off. 

“Right, exactly. So in essence, we’re never happy.”

“Pessimistic of you. Does being nostalgic negate being happy?”

“Oh.” Merlin pauses. “Fair point.”

Arthur leans forward. “You getting restless?”

“Yeah.” Merlin half-smiles. “Ealdor can’t hold all of this.” He waves his hand over himself and Arthur laughs, startling Morgana and Hunith out of their conversation. 

Arthur lets himself get pulled back into talks about Magda, the head of the bingo league, about how June is holding up, and about Old Thomson’s ineffective attempts at doing retirement the right way (his herb garden died within weeks). It’s comforting in a sense. They aren’t life and/or death questions, they’re just existing. Life in Ealdor is something else, something he’s missed and kind of loathes at the same time. 

“Let me help you clean up,” he says when Hunith starts to rise from her seat. 

“Oh, don’t worry about it, Arthur.”

“Mum, let people help, we’ve talked about this.”

She opens her mouth to protest, but then she nods and lets Arthur start to tidy the table. 

“You want help?” Morgana asks him and he shakes his head. 

“Kitchen’s small, we’ll just be in each other’s way.”

He stacks their dishes and balances them with care as he heads into the kitchen where Hunith has already filled the sink with hot water. She’s wearing blue dishwashing gloves that stop right below her elbows. 

“Thank you, dear.”

They wash up in silence. Arthur takes over the washing while Hunith dries and puts everything in its right place. 

“How are you holding up?” she asks as she studies him in a way that is all too knowing. “I know Merlin’s been a distraction, what with his moving and everything, but it’s hard being alone all of a sudden.”

“I think...” Arthur pauses for a moment before scrubbing the plate even harder. “I think I was alone long before I left.”

“Okay, so have you _been_ holding up, even before you left?”

“No,” he says, because the truth is starting to come easier when he’s talking to the right people. 

“Trust me on this,” Hunith says. “Time is the only thing that helps. And you have to let people help you. Call your father, he’s probably worried about you.”

He doesn’t say anything, because he really doesn’t want to call Uther again. He can imagine the conversation vividly, and it’s not one he wants to have. He’s so busy scrubbing that he starts when Hunith cradles his head and presses a kiss to his hair. 

“You’re a good boy. You deserve to be happy,” she says. “Do you understand?”

He says, “Yes” because she’s staring him down and he doesn’t think any other answer will fly. 

“And please don’t let Merlin lose the plot entirely. I have no idea what that boy is up to.”

Arthur makes a seriously embarrassing sound when he wakes up and stares right into Merlin’s face. He presses himself back against the wall and hisses, “What are you doing here?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Merlin whispers as he pulls back a little. 

“So you break into my room?”

“Oh, bugger off, a few weeks ago we slept on the floor of my flat, stoned out of our minds. If you were looking for some sort of modesty between us that flew out the window a long time ago.”

Arthur gives up on arguing and ignores Merlin’s surprised face as he walks past him in his boxers. 

“What are you doing?” 

Jumping on one leg to get his jeans on, Arthur turns his face up and smiles mockingly. “Letting go of the modesty between us.” He’s about to keep on going as Merlin looks sheepish, but he’s distracted by how tired Merlin looks and he lets it go. 

He pulls his jumper on. “What time is it?” 

“4 a.m.”

“Jesus. What’s your plan?”

“Let’s just go,” Merlin says and Arthur doesn’t argue. 

He grabs his jacked on the way out because it’s a cold autumn night (or morning, depending on how you look at it), even if it’s not raining. 

“There was this really shitty movie on TV,” Merlin says when they cross the road and continue down the street. His voice seems overly loud in the quiet night. “And I was like: I can’t take this, I wonder what Arthur is doing.”

Merlin stops to look into the empty chip shop, leans in and presses his hand to the glass. “Do not ever watch this movie... _Before Sunset_ , or something. It was just one long conversation and if I want to see that then I’ll just go to the pub and watch Old Thomson and Blake discuss the racing.”

“Merlin,” Arthur interrupts, jogging to catch up with him as Merlin takes off down the street again. “Why were you even up watching TV?”

“I told you: I couldn’t sleep.”

“And this happens often?”

“I guess,” Merlin says and veers off to the right. 

Arthur realises they’re going to the graveyard. “Merlin. Merlin, stop.”

Merlin turns around with an annoyed expression. “What?”

“What do you mean, what? You just dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night and it’s not the time to get all cryptic. All this ‘I’m so whimsical and totally okay’ bullshit is getting really old.”

Merlin’s jaw clenches and starts to wind his way between the headstones. 

“I have nightmares sometimes,” he says. “It’s not like, ruining my life or anything.”

“Okay.”

“That’s all you’re gonna say?” 

“What were you expecting me to say?” 

“I don’t know.” Merlin stops and Arthur comes up behind him. “Tell me to get a shrink or something.”

“You’re having nightmares. Unless you really feel they’re ruining your life I don’t think I’m going to force you to see a shrink.”

Merlin looks at him and gives a tiny smile. “Thanks.”

They fall into silence and face Will’s name now etched into the surface of a headstone – something that will last longer than his life ever did. 

“ _What is this world’s delight_?” Merlin says, eyes fixed on the stone. “ _Lightning that mocks the night/brief even as bright._ ”

When he catches Arthur’s questioning gaze he says, “Percy Bysshe Shelley” and tips his head back. 

“Are you trying to tell me by poetry that life is short?” 

“And myself,” Merlin says. “You know, when he died I said I’d live more. Just see more things and appreciate more things, but it just doesn’t work that way.”

The wind picks up a little, rustling through the trees. “Life is mundane, and there’s nothing you can do to change that in the end. When you read history books you never hear about them cleaning their dishes after dinner or doing homework, but you know.”

Merlin smiles properly then. “Imagine Newton doing his washing.”

“Attaching his clothesline to the tree in his garden because he likes the smell of the outdoors on his sheets.”

Merlin laughs. “You know, Newton lived to be 84. He had all the time in the world to do his washing just the way he wanted to.”

“The problem is,” Arthur says, “that you don’t know how long it’s going to be before it ends.”

“Very deep.”

“And true.”

“It freaks me out that you just never know.” Merlin looks out over the rows of headstones. “Like, would Will have done anything different if he knew? It sounds like such a ridiculous thing to think about. I mean, it’s so clichéd.”

Arthur thinks about it too. He’s wondered if _he_ would do anything different if he knew. It doesn’t matter if millions of people have thought it before them, really. 

“Maybe he would’ve,” he says. “I don’t know. I think all of us would do something different if we knew we were gonna die early.”

“I feel like I’ll fail him if I waste everything.”

“You won’t.”

Arthur leans over the bar. “Tell me that’s not a stack of bingo books. Please tell me very loud and clear.”

“Uhm.” Merlin looks up, sheepish. “It’s not bingo books?”

“ _Mer_ lin.”

“What? Have you tried to say no to Magda? You know she’s got a bad heart.”

“You’re really going to bingo,” Arthur says, incredulous. 

“You can’t talk me out of this. I’ve made up my mind. I have a life to live.”

Arthur takes away Merlin’s pint with no consideration for his protests. “Yeah, you can live your life without going to bingo. You’re not yet of retirement age.”

“Hey, that’s ageist.”

Giving Merlin a flat look, Arthur tries to wrestle the books away from him. “Give _me those_.”

Merlin wins the tussle and stretches his arms above his head triumphantly as Gaius looks on from the barstool next to him with one eyebrow arched. 

Straightening up, Arthur tugs his shirt back into place and puts on his most serious face. 

“Dark times lie ahead of us,” he says gravely, “and there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right.”

Merlin’s lips twitch. 

Throwing his arms out, Arthur says smugly, “You’re not the only one who knows poetry.”

“That’s from Harry Potter.”

“Basically the same thing.”

“Literally not at all,” Merlin says and laughs. 

And then Merlin goes to bingo, like that’s something _normal_. Gaius looks after him and says, “That’s one troubled young boy” and Arthur can only nod. He goes back to cleaning behind the counter, putting a batch of clean glasses back in their place. 

“You’re getting better at this,” Morgana says, coming up behind him after he’s served a few customers. 

“It’s not so bad.”

“Your hidden talents are endless.” She clicks the till open. “Maybe I should take you on full time.”

She says it half-jokingly, but he knows that she could. He could stay here, and work here, forever if that’s what he wants. He doesn’t know what he wants. Part of him thinks it seems safe – good. And yet his throat constricts at the thought. 

“I thought we could ask Hunith over for dinner this week,” Morgana says as she taps another pint. “Return the favour. I can cook if you don’t want to.”

“You, cook?”

“Oh, shut up.” She laughs. 

“I think I’ll do it.”

“Like you’re so much better.”

He looks at her over his shoulder. “I’m not the one who burnt the onions to charcoal the last time I made anything.”

“Fine,” she says. “We’ll invite her over for a gourmet meal cooked by you, then.”

He sticks his tongue out at her like they’re still eight years old and she gives him a mocking smile as she heads off. 

He really has gotten better at this whole thing, though. Morgana wasn’t lying about that. Things run pretty smoothly all evening until Merlin comes back to distract him. Merlin makes a dramatic entrance, barging through the door and flopping down on a barstool. The bingo ladies follow in behind him, and head for one of the empty tables. 

“I have hit rock bottom,” he announces, throwing the used bingo sheets onto the bar. 

“No arguments here.”

“This is stupid, Arthur.” Merlin leans in and rests his head against his hand. “What are we doing here? I’ll tell you what we’re doing here. I had an epiphany.”

“Over bingo.”

“Shut up, it’s soothing. Makes me think.”

“Fine, and your grand epiphany is?” Arthur asks, not sure he’s interested in the answer. 

“We’re hiding. We’re just fucking hiding here, that’s what we’re doing.” Merlin takes the beer Arthur taps for him. “We’re here because it’s easy and we know this place, and everything else is just nothing but unknown bullshit. But what are we gonna do here forever?”

Arthur stops what he’s doing and leans onto the bar. “You’re just freaking out. There’s nothing wrong with being in Ealdor. Morgana’s here, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, but see.” Merlin holds up his hand. “Here’s the thing. Morgana _wants_ to be here. She came here because she wanted to. She had a good life already but she said, hey, I wanna go to Ealdor and take over the pub. That’s not what we’re doing.”

“I wanted to,” Arthur says, defensive.

“Did you? Your marriage ended and you gave your flat to your ex. What did London hold for you anymore? The person you’re closest to is Morgana, don’t think I don’t realise that, and she’s here.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Arthur says, his voice rising. This is all stupid. Merlin is splitting hairs with his bingo-fueled epiphany. 

“Of course it fucking does. We didn’t choose this because we wanted to, we chose it because it was our last way out. And it’s worked for us so far, but can you see us moving forwards here?” Merlin meets his eyes and refuses to look away. “Because I don’t. We’ll only move backwards.”

It’s Arthur who can’t keep looking at him and instead starts wiping down the bar, clenching his jaw so hard it hurts. 

“Arthur...”

“So, what you’re telling me is that I’m wasting my life,” Arthur says before Merlin can make any other grand observations. “Thanks. I had no idea.”

“Calm down.” 

Arthur snaps his head up sharply and he glares at him, anger swelling in his chest.

“What I’m saying,” Merlin says, leaning in with a placating look on his face, “is that we don’t have to stay here and move backwards. We should move. You and I. Somewhere where none of us have been before.”

Arthur looks away, jaw clenched. “You’re mad.”

He’s so angry it’s hard to see straight and he doesn’t know why. It’s not even that Merlin is wrong. Arthur’s been getting comfortable here, settling in, but he can’t see himself stay here forever if he’s honest with himself about it. And maybe that’s why he _is_ mad, because staying in Ealdor would be easy. 

And right now he really does want things to be easy. 

The thing is, though, that his life _isn’t_ easy right now. And pretending that it’s smooth sailing is lying to himself. 

Merlin seems to sense his mood and steps down, not pushing it further. Instead he sits in silence, woefully looking at his bingo cards and their lack of bingo. 

There’s something about Merlin that Arthur hasn’t been able to put his finger on ever since Will’s funeral. He’d thought it might have to do with Will, but over time it’s seemed like it’s not just that. There’s something about Merlin’s face when he forgets to control it. 

And then it hits Arthur, just as Merlin’s stare turns blank and his control disappears, his thoughts far away. His expressions say what Arthur feels. It’s like a mirror image of himself, if he’d been leaner and had better cheekbones. 

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?” Merlin’s head snaps up as if he forgot Arthur was there at all.

“I’ll move somewhere with you.”

“Really?” 

“Yes. Even if I have a feeling you have no fucking clue where we’re moving.”

Merlin lights up. “I have an idea!”

“Oh god, not another one.”

Merlin’s idea, as it turns out, involves a dartboard with accompanying darts and a map of the UK.

“You’re not throwing that,” Arthur says, arms crossed over his chest. 

“Why not?” Merlin’s voice is muffled by the dart he’s keeping in place with his teeth as he spreads the map out over the dartboard. 

“Because you have the worst aim I’ve ever seen, we’ll end up living in the North Sea.”

Merlin picks the dart out from between his lips. “Don’t ruin this! This is a momentous occasion.”

Arthur purses his lips and waits. If Merlin asks he’ll never tell, but he does hold his breath and feels a tingle of anticipation when Merlin steps back and takes aim. The dart actually hits the board (not always a guarantee with Merlin) and Merlin runs up, squinting at the map.

“Uh, maybe we should round up to the nearest city,” Merlin suggests, “because I’m not really feeling up to moving to Glengamock.” He sounds out the name hesitantly. 

“Good idea,” Arthur says drily. 

And just as Morgana comes in, saying, “What’s going on?” Merlin turns around and beams. “We’re moving to Glasgow!”

Morgana pinches the bridge of her nose. “Oy.”

Arthur cards his fingers through his hair in an attempt to rinse the shampoo out if it under the abysmal water pressure. The pipes creak a little, but it doesn’t freak him out like it did the first time when he nearly slipped on the tiles in surprise. It’s become one of those familiar sounds of the place, like the sound of Morgana tinkering around downstairs.

It might be a good day today because she sings, mildly out of tune, but Arthur has always enjoyed Morgana’s singing, even if he keeps really fucking quiet about that little tidbit. 

He sighs and shakes his arms a little, feeling them cramp up from holding them to his head for so long, and just stands there under the stream (which is a generous name for it). 

Glasgow.

Glasgow?

Something clatters to the floor downstairs.

_Glasgow_

The word sounds neutral in his head. Maybe there’s a bit of trepidation in there, a little bit of anticipation, and maybe some disbelief. But he doesn’t know if it’s going to be good or bad. He doesn’t know if he’s dreading it or looking forward to it. 

Everything’s a bit of a mess. He wants to, or he wouldn’t have said yes, but it’s strange too. He always figured he’d go back to London after staying at Morgana’s for a while. 

Steps shuffle up the stairs and there’s a knock on the door before Morgana says, “post for you! I put it on the bed, okay? And we have those people from Norwich coming over today, remember, so stop daydreaming in there.”

“Wouldn’t need to be daydreaming in here if your shower released more than two drops at a time!”

He doesn’t get an answer, but he stands under the water a little longer just to spite her before he steps out onto the cold tiles. The mirror is entirely fogged up and he leans in to run his hand across it a few times, peering at the way his hair sticks up. 

The slight guilt for making Morgana prepare alone downstairs makes him get dressed quickly. He nearly forgets about the post until it falls off the bed when he gets up from putting on his socks. 

He picks it up, and turns it over. It’s a plain, white envelope, but the writing at the front is Sophia’s. His breath gets stuck in his throat and he sits down again, hating the way his fingers tremble when he tears it open. 

_Congratulations on Your Divorce._

It doesn’t say that, but it might as well have. It’s the official _huzzah, you’re now forever someone who got married and then gave up on it instead of fighting for it_ -document, the one that says they’re no longer legally tied to each other and can do whatever the hell they like. 

Instead of feeling freed by it, he rubs a hand over his eyes as he swallows against the lump in his throat. 

He cries, because even though the road has been slow, it still seems unreal that it came to this in the first place. And even though he knows neither of them wants to be married anymore, it still doesn’t erase the fact that they once wanted to be. 

They had a relationship that worked. She was a terrible scatterbrain and he’d kept her together. He would work too hard and she’d loop her arms around his neck from behind and tell him to leave it be and live the other parts of his life. 

And they’d had plans, once. 

He misses that, in a sense. He misses the thing they had at some point, but he doesn’t miss the couple they would have been now. It’s that thing about nostalgia again. He realises that. The relationship he misses no longer is, and can no longer be. 

When Morgana appears in the doorway, her hair slipping out of her messy ponytail, he tries to wipe the tears from his cheeks before she sees them, but he has no such luck. 

Whatever she’d been saying dies on her lips and she slips inside, sitting down next to him. Her arm hooks around him and she rests her head on his shoulder. 

“You’ll be okay,” she says. 

“Yeah.”

“You go to Glasgow and you start over. And Sophia will be fine too. You’ll both be fine.”

He lets Morgana pull him into a sideways hug without protesting.

He doesn’t even argue when she asks Old Thomson to watch the pub for a bit in the evening when it’s all calmed down. They sit outside in the back garden, their jackets huddled around them as Merlin pours wine in plastic cups. 

“Sometimes things die,” Merlin says, holding his cup out for a toast. “And that sucks.”

“Amen.” Morgana raises her cup too.

“Shush, I wasn’t finished.”

She laughs. “ _Fine_.”

“But we keep going anyway, because we have to and it’s okay.”

A hushed silence falls and Merlin pushes his cup at Arthur’s. “I’m totally done now, you guys can chime in any time.”

“Would you do the honours?” Morgana says and hands Arthur the wedding ring he hasn’t been wearing for months. 

He stands up and feels the cold breeze on his face when he looks out at the garden, with the tall weeds and the trees and the stream babbling in the distance. Closing his eyes, he pulls his hand back and throws it as hard as he can. He hears the rustling as it hits the ground, but he’ll never know where it landed and he’ll never go looking for it. 

“The word is yours,” Merlin says solemnly when he sits back down. 

Arthur looks out at the garden as he takes a sip from the cheap red wine. 

“That ring was expensive as fuck,” he says and the other two start laughing, leaning into each other. 

“You can’t put a price on the cleansing of your soul,” Morgana tells him and pats his knee. 

He rolls his eyes and chooses to keep drinking the wine even though it’s probably the foulest tasting wine he’s ever had in his life. His hands are cold and he hides his free one in the sleeve of his jacket. 

Merlin is looking at him with uncertainty. There aren’t a lot of times Merlin’s been unsure around him since they met again. Merlin always just seems to throw himself into conversation, dragging Arthur around with him wherever he wants to go, both metaphorically and physically. 

But Arthur hasn’t talked much about this, so of course Merlin’s apprehensive. He doesn’t want either of them to think he’s going to throw himself in front of a car; he wants to explain it’s not like that. 

Words are hard. 

“We had a lot of plans once,” he says, because he hasn’t been able to let go of the plans. “We were going to move out of London eventually. Not that far, just to Richmond or something. Sophia wanted two kids, and I wanted however many we could get.”

Morgana nudges his knee with hers. 

“I think it all started to go to hell when we found out I can’t have kids.” He shrugs. “It wasn’t like she dumped me because of it or anything, but we just didn’t know how to talk about it because she wanted them so bad and at some point, I did too. And then all the plans just sort of crumbled. We stopped making new ones. Everything just came to a stop and then neither of us cared anymore.”

“Do you love her?” Merlin asks, and Arthur’s first instinct is to not answer, but he looks so earnest about it, his eyes wide as he meets Arthur’s eyes without blinking. 

“No.” Arthur makes a face. “Not anymore. I love who she used to be, I guess? Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Merlin says. “Absolutely.”

“You know our cells change all the time, right?” When Merlin stares at him in surprise, Arthur laughs. “I read that somewhere. I do read, you know. But they change all the time. And by a set number of years you’re basically all new cells: a new you. A different you, but kind of the same anyway.”

“I think we need to take the wine away from you before you go so deep you hurt yourself.” Morgana leans in and paws at his cup. Arthur shoves her away, sticking his hand in her face until she laughs, her breath warm against his palm.

It turns out that finding a flat in Glasgow is harder than it sounds, especially from several hours away. They decide they need to go there to find one. In a stroke of luck, it turns out that Gwen moved there in August and has a spare bedroom for them to crash in.

So Arthur leaves Ealdor with the four boxes he came with, except this time they’re stuffed into the boot of Johan and squashed under the endless amount of shit Merlin doesn’t need but thinks he does. He leaves his own car behind with Morgana. It makes no sense, really, because it’s vastly better than Johan, but the car feels like it belongs to someone else. 

It belongs to the version of Arthur that was many, many cells ago. 

Gwen lives in Hillhead. They only find the building in the end because Arthur looks it up on Google maps with Merlin’s phone, and they still manage to get lost twice because Merlin is a useless driver who can’t listen to Arthur when he says “right” even if Merlin claims he said “left.” (He didn’t.)

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Gwen says when she opens the door wide. Her grin is threatening to take over her face. 

Merlin swoops in and pulls her into a crushing hug, lifting her off her feet until her squeals echo in the hallway. 

“Oh my god,” she says, breathless, as she hunches over. “And you didn’t even try to save me, Arthur.”

“It’s no use,” he says. 

“He’s right.” Merlin beams. “I’ve trained him well.”

They follow her inside. The flat is decently sized with two bedrooms, a nice little kitchen and a living room that gets a lot of natural light. She gives them the grand tour, which consists of throwing her arm out in different directions saying, “Here it is!”

Their room is tiny. Merlin laughs when he sees it.

“At least we’ll figure out soon enough if we’re fit for being flat mates or not,” Merlin says as he puts his duffel bag down by the chest of drawers. 

“Unless I kill you first,” Arthur mutters as he looks around. 

It doesn’t take a lot of time to look around. 

“You could never.”

Arthur hums noncommittally. 

“I know it’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, right?” Gwen says from the doorway, but before they can answer she’s talking again. “And enough about all this. Let’s get to the more important parts. I can’t _believe_ you guys are here!”

“Believe me, we can’t believe _you’re_ here,” Merlin says, reaching out to ruffle her hair. “You’re our saviour of light and sparkly goodness.”

She laughs, swatting his hand away. “I transferred to their med school program in September.”

“What? I didn’t even know you were in med school,” Merlin says.

“I’m starting my third year, though, I thought I told you!”

“You didn’t, and I’m very offended by this.” Merlin pushes her out of the room. “Arthur, call for some pizza, yeah? Our treat since she’s taking us in.”

“I’m guessing you mean _my_ treat.” He takes Merlin’s phone anyway. 

Merlin grins crookedly. “Well, you’re the one with the money in this arrangement.”

They settle on her couch when the pizza gets there. It’s a tight fit and Merlin is squeezed between them, but none of them really mind. It reminds Arthur about all of them hanging out back in the day, pushing themselves together in Merlin’s tiny room or the creepy basement at Leon’s place. 

“I thought you were in Manchester,” Gwen says, propping a slice up on her fingers. 

The end of it droops and she catches it between her teeth. 

“Oh, yeah. No.” 

“He left for bigger and better things,” Arthur says.

Merlin reaches up and pets his cheek. “You’re the nicest. Trying to put a positive spin on the record shop giving up on life. I’m touched, really.”

“Oh no, it closed? That’s awful, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not so bad,” he says, shrugging. “I’ve been hanging out in Ealdor. It’s like the good old times.”

“You guys do realise this is really random, right? I mean, last I knew you both lived at the opposite sides of the country.”

“It’s a really long story.” Merlin makes a face. 

She looks at them and nods. “Okay. You’ll have to tell me sometime when I don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn.”

“Someday,” Merlin promises.

Arthur thinks they probably shouldn’t.

Arthur sleeps on the floor the first night and Merlin does the floor shift the second night. On the third one, Merlin tells him that they’re being patently ridiculous.

“We can share a bed for a little while. We won’t die,” Merlin says. “Unless you have some infectious skin disease I don’t know anything about.”

“I don’t have a skin disease.”

“I know that.” Merlin rolls his eyes and pats the spot next to him on the bed. “Neither do I, if you need to know.”

It’s strange sleeping next to someone again. After a while of sleeping in the same bed as someone, he gets used to it. He gets used to the way they move, and the way he moves. He gets used to the way they curl into him, or away from him, and he stops being self-conscious about all the weird sleep things he does. 

But sleeping next to someone else for the first time is weird. Arthur feels too aware of his body, and he attempts to arrange his arms so he’s not in the way, but it’s not comfortable. Especially since the bed is on the small side. 

He’s not even able to let go when Merlin’s breath evens out into sleep. He turns onto his side, studying the sharpness of Merlin’s cheekbones. It’s dark, but his eyes have adjusted enough to make out the way Merlin’s lips are parted and his eyelashes fan out against his skin. 

Arthur has never really known what Merlin looks like when he sleeps. There are a lot of things he’s never known about Merlin, but he’s learning them, steadily and slowly. He hasn’t even planned to. It just sort of happened when Merlin came back into his life out of nowhere, entering stage right as if he’d just had a brief pause during Act II and was coming back for Act III. 

Merlin smacks his lips together, his tongue peeking out for a moment, and Arthur’s breath catches in his throat. 

He closes his eyes quickly, forcing himself to keep them closed until he falls asleep.

Somehow, he sleeps peacefully until morning and wakes up on his side of the bed, all arms and legs where they should be. He’s never been one to move much in his sleep, but it’d be typical if this was the one time he did. Merlin, on the other hand, is on his stomach, one arm and leg hanging off the edge of the bed. His face is smushed down into the pillow, and Arthur doesn’t even know how he’s able to breathe. 

“Ohgodnostop,” Merlin mutters into the pillow when Arthur shakes him awake. 

Gwen has gone already, but she’s left a selection of cereal for them on the table with a quickly scribbled note wishing them a good day and a not-too-horrifying flat hunt. 

Arthur has already eaten half his bowl when Merlin shuffles in, eyes bleary and his hair standing on end when he sits down opposite him. Grabbing a box of cereal seemingly at random, he rubs sleep out of his eyes and leans heavily onto his elbow on the table. 

“Any idea where to start looking for flats?” Arthur asks, breaking the stillness of morning. 

“Ugh, I don’t know,” Merlin says, groaning, before he seems to pull himself together and straighten up a little. “I suppose we should just get online and start checking what’s out there.”

“Do you think Gwen has a laptop somewhere?” 

“Probably brought it with her to uni,” Merlin says. “But we can use my phone. You take a look while I shower?”

The Internet on Merlin’s phone is sluggish, but Arthur manages to load a few listings. He also finds a notepad and some pens in the top drawer by the microwave and writes down addresses and dates for viewings. Some of them are available for viewing today, and he writes those down at the top, circling them in red. 

He forgets himself and takes a bite out of his cereal, making a face when it turns out it’s gone soggy. 

“Why the fuck are you still eating that?” Merlin asks, standing in the doorway from the bathroom in nothing but jogging bottoms, toweling his hair. 

“’M not,” Arthur says, voice a little muffled because he hasn’t quite swallowed yet. 

Merlin looks at him, fighting a smile. His hair is ruffled, standing up on his head. 

“I can tell.”

Arthur gets up and rinses their bowls in the sink before putting them in the washer. He doesn’t want to be a burden on Gwen, considering she’s nice enough to let them stay. 

“Okay, so four flats today?” Merlin says and Arthur looks over his shoulder to see Merlin peering down at the notepad. 

“Yeah. They’re all over the city, from what I can tell, so it’ll probably take a while.” 

Merlin claps his hands, making Arthur raise his eyebrow in question. “Hey, this is fun! The two of us driving around in an unfamiliar city, looking for a cheap flat to rent. It’s like we’re eighteen again.”

Arthur can’t explain it, but the whole thing immediately feels less daunting. Because, yes, it does feel like he’s eighteen again, with everything that follows it, for better and worse. And maybe, really, that’s a good thing and not something he should be afraid of. 

“Go put a shirt on.” 

“I don’t know,” Merlin says, making a show of flexing. “I was thinking I’d go like this, bound to impress whoever is renting out these places.”

The muscles in Merlin’s arms work and Arthur follows them with his eyes for a moment before laughing. “I’m sure that’ll be a great success.”

“Hey.” Merlin puts on an expression of great offense. “I’ll have you know that all of this has gotten me far in life.”

“I have no idea what to say to that,” Arthur yells after him when Merlin disappears into their room to get dressed.

Merlin drives, again, because Arthur has no idea how to drive Johan, although Merlin insists that he’ll have to learn sometime. “It’s not that complicated, really,” he says, even as he does this weird ritual with the gearstick. 

“Where to, Captain?” Merlin asks as they pull out from Gwen’s street. 

“Take a left here.” Arthur props the notepad in his lap. “I’ve made a route so we don’t have to keep driving back and forth.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Well, I’m the one paying for petrol.”

It starts raining, just a slow drizzle at first. Eventually, it’s pouring, flooding the streets as people run for cover. Merlin nearly hits someone with a wave of water as he drives through a giant puddle. 

“Sorry!” he yells, even though there’s no way they can hear him. 

“You don’t happen to have an umbrella in the car, do you?” Arthur asks, peering into the back seat. “Take a right up here.”

“Nope.” Merlin cranes his neck to make sure no one’s coming in the opposite direction. “Umbrellas are for people who can’t deal with the realities of life.”

“Or they’re for people who adapt to the realities of life.”

Merlin stills, making a face. “Touché.”

Of course, they don’t find a parking space very close to the flat, so by the time they make it through the front door of the building, they’re soaked. 

“My shoes are bubbling,” Merlin says as they stand in the hallway, shaking the water out of their… well, everything. 

Arthur pushes his hair out of his face, shivering at the drop of water that slides down his neck. Merlin doesn’t look much better with his hair plastered to his head and water running down his cheek, dipping into the hollow beneath his cheekbones. In a move that’s completely innocent in his head, Arthur reaches forwards and swipes the water away with his thumb. 

Merlin’s skin is slick under his, and the tip of his thumb runs against Merlin’s cheekbone. It didn’t seem like they were standing this close before, but now that Arthur’s hand is resting lightly on Merlin’s face, it’s all suddenly very different. Merlin’s eyes are large when he looks up from where he’s been inspecting his shirt. 

It only takes a second, all of it, before Arthur’s hand is gone again, but it’s heavier than a second. A second is just a light little thing, like paper, or a slight breeze. But this is heavy – filled with something. 

Merlin shivers from the cold. “We’re going to have to go home and change after this. I might have to concede that umbrellas aren’t all that useless.”

The person showing them the flat is less than amused at them showing up dripping wet, but Merlin won’t have any of it. (“Are you a weather god? Well, neither are we.”)

Needless to say, Arthur really doubts they’re going to get this flat over the nice couple with the cute little baby kicking her feet and gurgling. 

“I can do that too,” Merlin says, sullen, and Arthur pats his back. 

“Yes, you can.”

“I’m way cuter than that baby,” he says, just loud enough to get a scandalised glare from the mother. 

Arthur pushes Merlin ahead of him. “Go.”

“Okay, plan of action,” Merlin says when they’re back in the car. “One: go home and change.”

“Two: learn how to not behave around people renting out their flats.”

“Shut up. _Two:_ buy umbrella.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything.

“Three,” Merlin continues, “find flat.”

Steps one and two are fairly easy. The only problems they lead to are more shirtlessness (this time mutual, and Arthur doesn’t know when he started having issues with that) and two seriously overpriced umbrellas. 

The third point, however, proves to be a tougher nut to crack. The first is already out, and the second one isn’t looking too well either.

“Oh god, it smells like piss,” Merlin says with a horrified expression. 

And it kind of does. Or at any rate it smells like something unidentifiable which is just as bad, if not worse. That’s a shame, really, because otherwise the flat isn’t too horrible. It’s pretty roomy, if a little worn, but they could probably have made it work somehow. 

They still follow the guy around, trailing after a small group of people. 

“This is the place of my nightmares,” Merlin says and starts a little in surprise as a girl with short brown hair and an intricate tattoo on her neck pops up next to them. 

“Do you guys smell that?” she whispers in a Scottish accent Arthur can’t properly place. 

“I wish I didn’t,” Merlin says miserably. 

“Good, for a moment I thought I was going mad.”

Arthur glances at the guy talking about shelf-space. “We all probably are.”

She gives a lop-sided grin. “It’s like falling down the rabbit hole.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Merlin says when he sees the bathroom and takes a step backwards. “This is the place where dreams go to die.”

“It’s not _that_ bad.” 

Arthur would consider living here, if he had to, and if the smell were gone. 

“Oh god, we’re going before you decide to move in.” Merlin drags him along, leaving the nameless girl behind in laughter.

Gwen is home when they get in.

“Bless your holy being,” Merlin says when he sees the Indian take away on the living room table. 

She looks up from the huge textbook propped open in her lap, and breaks into a smile when she sees them. “How’d it go?”

“Don’t even,” Merlin says as he sits down and opens one of the containers.

“They’re probably a little cold; you should stick them in the microwave.” 

Merlin groans, leans back on the sofa, and looks at Arthur with a pitiful expression. Rolling his eyes, Arthur takes the containers with him into the kitchen and makes room for as many as he can in the microwave.

“One of them smelled like piss, I swear to god, Gwen,” Merlin says. “And we got caught in the rain on the way to the first one we checked out. Not to mention that we keep getting unfairly upstaged by cute babies.”

“Oh, that’s just dirty play.”

“That’s what I said! Plus I told Arthur I can out-cute those babies anytime, but he wouldn’t let me take my shirt off.”

“Clearly Arthur doesn’t know what’s good for him.”

“Seriously. He has no idea how to work the charms, that’s all I’m saying. He’s all honey-blond hair and stupidly blue eyes and he won’t even use it to his advantage. Worst flat mate ever.”

Gwen hums just as the microwave dings and Arthur switches out the containers. 

“He does sound dreadful, what with the stupidly blue eyes and all.”

“Shut up.” Merlin laughs, and it goes quiet for a while, until Gwen laughs breathlessly. Arthur doesn’t know what kind of silent war went on between them, but he can guess.

When he comes back in with the food, Merlin throws himself over it, his face blissed out as he takes the first bite. 

“Mmm, God, we haven’t eaten enough today,” he says, curling up in the corner of the sofa. “Tomorrow we eat more.”

“Tomorrow we try not to make arses of ourselves,” Arthur says. 

“Wa’n’t tha’ bad.”

Gwen laughs. “Swallow your food, Merlin, you’ll choke.”

And so Merlin shuts up, just eating. Gwen goes back to her book for the time being, head bent as she highlights in pink. 

Merlin finally puts the container down and rubs his belly demonstratively. “Thanks, Gwen. I mean, for everything. You’re the best.”

There’s a slight smile on her face when she looks up. “Come on, it’s no problem.”

“You don’t happen to know anyone who’s hiring?” Merlin asks, looking a little sheepish. “I mean, Arthur has some money but I’m not really going to live off him for the rest of my days, even if he did offer.”

“I did not.”

“You did. Without words. I saw it in your face.”

“Did you also see my plans to punch you in the knees?”

“I chose to ignore them,” Merlin says, eyes crinkling. He suddenly notices that Gwen’s attention has gone to her phone while they bickered. “You’re smiling like a loon. Who’s the lucky bloke?”

Her head snaps up and she blushes, immediately dropping her phone down on the table. “No one.”

“Liar.”

“I’ll ask around and find out if someone’s hiring.” She closes the book and puts it aside. 

“Great,” Merlin says, “but really, spill it.”

“Oh my god,” she says, and hides her face in her hands. “It’s kind of embarrassing!”

“Even better.”

She glares at him and Merlin laughs. 

“I kind of… hooked up with Leon? When we were in Ealdor.”

Merlin beams. “Yes,” he croons. “I knew you guys would end up together.”

“You did _not_.”

“I did. I was actually kind of convinced you had something going on back then too.”

Gwen looks away and Merlin flails his hands. “Oh my god!”

“Merlin, stop,” Arthur says, trying not to smile. “You’re embarrassing her.”

“But I was right!”

“Yes, congrats,” Arthur says flatly. 

Gwen punches Merlin in the arm. “Well, everyone said something was going on between you and Arthur too!”

Arthur has to disguise the surprised twitch of his arm by fiddling with a cushion.

“Oh, there wasn’t,” Merlin says with a small smile directed at him. “Seems only some scandalous rumours are true.”

“Yes, well,” she says. “He’s moving up here in a month.”

Merlin’s expression brightens, his smile genuine. “That’s brilliant. I’m really happy for you.”

“I didn’t want to say anything at first,” she says, and tucks her leg underneath herself. “It was kind of embarrassing that it happened that night, you know. I mean, Will… and just, yeah.”

“Nights like that are weird for everyone,” Arthur says. “No judgement here.”

“Thanks,” she says, her brows furrowed. “I hope everything’s been well in Ealdor. How’s June?”

“Things are alright. June’s doing okay under the circumstances, I think. Mum and the others have been checking up on her as much as they can.”

“I’m glad. I’ve been thinking about them a lot, but you know how it is. You never end up checking in.”

They clear off the table together and put some of the left overs in the fridge. When Gwen goes to bed, they go too since they have another day of flat hunting ahead of them. 

It’s quiet between them while they get ready for bed, but it’s not tense. Arthur pulls out the T-shirt he sleeps in, and watches for a moment as Merlin climbs into bed in only the sweatpants he’d slept in last night as well. Merlin’s eyes are closed when Arthur slides in under the covers and tries to relax into the mattress. 

He can’t sleep, and he doesn’t think Merlin is sleeping either, because his breath is too shallow for that. With his eyes tightly closed, Arthur tries to forget the fact that Merlin is sleeping so close that they’d be touching if either of them reached out a hand. And he tries to forget that while there is money in his bank account, it’s a limited pool. 

Merlin’s mention of a job has settled in him, weirdly heavy and suffocating. He’s burned the bridges to his old job, he knows that, and even if he could somehow get rehired and transferred to a branch closer to Glasgow, he wouldn’t want to. But he doesn’t know what he does want, and that’s the problem.

He has no idea. 

This is another Arthur, one with entirely new cells, who no longer has a wife and no longer lives in London. This life is something else entirely, like an alternate reality or a dystopian society.

Maybe it is a dystopian society, if the apocalypse was his divorce and Will’s death. And how can your wants and needs be the same when the world has ended and been born anew?

Blood pumps under his skin, his pulse too strong. He’s oddly aware of it as he lies there, a weird feeling spreading in his gut, one that he can’t explain but if he had to, he’d call it a vortex. It swirls in him with a force that throws everything out of balance. 

Merlin’s hand is warm on his upper arm, long fingers curl over his bicep as his thumb rubs softly over Arthur’s skin. Arthur’s muscles relax slowly into the bed, his eyelids growing heavy. 

“Sleep,” Merlin says, words slurred because he’s on the edge of it himself. 

A second later, Merlin’s breath evens out, turning deep and slow. It’s close enough to brush over Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur’s pulse calms, but he’s still awake. He turns his head, almost surprised at proximity of Merlin’s face. The corner of Merlin’s lips is turned downward in sleep, the lower lip jutting out into a little pout. 

Arthur falls asleep before he can tell himself to think about something else.

Flat hunting is a lot less fun than it sounds. It’s a bit of a hopeless thing, in fact, and as the week goes by, Merlin becomes less and less enthusiastic about the whole thing. They keep being upstaged by adorable babies, a very bubbly pair of Pilates coaches, and a disgustingly cute gay couple that Arthur can’t even hate because they were absolutely lovely.

“We should pretend to be together,” Merlin had said when they left as he got into the passenger seat.

“Absolutely not,” Arthur had said as he got in to drive because at least the week of flat hunting had given him time to learn the tricks of Johan. 

When the weekend comes, Gwen leaves them the key to the flat as she heads off to spend Saturday and Sunday with Leon. Merlin sends her away with a waggle of his eyebrows and then promptly flops down on the sofa with a groan as he stretches out. 

“Fuck my life,” he says into the pillow. 

Arthur pushes his legs aside, sitting down in the corner. “What’s up?”

“They called from that one flat and said they gave it to the Pilates girls.”

“Well, are you surprised?” Arthur asks, eyebrows raised.

“No. I just…” Merlin turns onto his side and rests his head on his arm. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this. It was a fucking ridiculous idea.”

“Shut up.” Arthur reaches for the remote. Eastenders is on when he turns on the TV so he changes channel quickly. “Did you think it was going to be easy?”

“I guess maybe I did? I didn’t think it’d be this difficult, at least.”

“It’s only been a week.”

“But we’re not getting _anywhere_ ,” Merlin says. “I can’t get a job either. I think we should go back to Ealdor.”

Arthur stills, and looks at Merlin in disbelief. “You’re joking.”

“Look, this was obviously an impulsive decision that I made without thinking it through.” Merlin sits up. He runs a hand through his hair. “I do that, sometimes. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this. Or Gwen.”

“Just shut up,” Arthur says with enough heat to make Merlin look at him sharply. “I’m sick of giving things up. It’s all I’ve been doing lately, and yeah, sometimes it’s the right thing to do, but sometimes it isn’t. And we haven’t even _tried_.”

“We have!”

“So you’re just giving up. Because a flat hasn’t landed in our laps during the first week.”

“I’m being realistic here. Too late, yeah, but we can’t keep living here with Gwen forever. That’s unfair to her and it’s not right.”

“So you’d rather go home and live with your mum forever,” Arthur says. 

“That’s not even remotely the same.”

“You’re squatting at someone else’s place either way. We both know that’s not what it’s about.”

Merlin’s face hardens. “Yeah okay, since you’re the expert, you can tell me what it’s about, then.”

He shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t, but the thought of going back to Ealdor, back to scratch, is terrifying. 

“You run from things,” he says, too angry to stop when Merlin’s jaw clenches. “You ran from Manchester when you lost your job. I’m willing to bet you ran from uni too when it got tough. You ran to Glasgow because Ealdor was freaking you out. You’re running back now because Glasgow isn’t a magical fix.”

Merlin is quiet for a moment before he speaks, voice cutting, “Oh, this is fucking rich coming from the guy who’s too afraid of his past to have a phone in case the past calls.”

“I just got divorced,” Arthur says. “I just needed some fucking time alone.”

“Yeah?” Merlin says, getting up from the sofa. “Well, I just fucking lost my best friend and my job, and I’ve been failing my entire life at finding out what the fuck I want. So maybe I just fucking need to move until I find out what it is.”

Merlin sleeps in Gwen’s room that night and the bed in the spare room is oddly empty. Arthur splays out in it, forgetting how he used to sleep when he was alone. When he does sleep, it’s restless, and he wakes up several times during the night. At one point he hears Merlin going into the bathroom, and he listens to the soft padding of feet and the sounds of Merlin tinkering around in there until his cheeks burn in embarrassment over the things he said. 

The next morning Merlin is already in the kitchen when Arthur comes in, which is every kind of abnormal because Merlin is completely useless in the morning. Arthur looks down at himself, running his hand over the rumpled T-shirt. He hasn’t bothered to shower or make himself presentable in any way, but he doesn’t know if it matters. 

“Hi,” Merlin says, looking over his shoulder for a moment. He pauses and Arthur doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, but then he turns back towards the stove. 

Arthur clears his throat. “Hi,” he says, voice still hoarse. “You’re up early.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep. You’re up late.”

Arthur sits down by the kitchen table. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Merlin looks back at him again, and they share a swift smile. 

The kitchen turns quiet as Merlin takes a pot from the stove, reaching up to find two cups in the cupboard. “Tea?”

“Thanks.”

They sit down opposite each other and drink tea in silence. Merlin gets out the newspaper from the day before and leafs through it while Arthur gets up to make toast. Eventually, the silence stops being comfortable and starts being tense. They both throw looks at each other when they think the other one isn’t. 

“Look, you were right,” Merlin said when Arthur sits back down. 

Arthur freezes in place and looks up to see Merlin keep his eyes firmly on anything but him.

“I wasn’t –”

“Yeah, you were. I run from things. I don’t know what I want, so if I start feeling bad about something, I leave because I figure it’s not what I want.” Merlin turns the page in the paper even if he’s not reading. “Not anymore, though. If you’re still in, I am too.”

“I am,” he says without pause. “And not just because you were right about me too.”

Merlin smirks. 

“But you were. I mean, yeah. I’m so afraid of repeating the past that I don’t even want to think about it being there.”

“Like it’s contagious,” Merlin says, but there’s no malice in it. 

“Exactly.” Arthur takes a bite of his toast. “But can anyone prove it isn’t?”

Merlin laughs. “It probably is. But you’re a cliché, Arthur. The past will always be there even if you pretend it isn’t. Don’t you ever read? There are literally hundreds of books about this.”

“Ha ha.”

“I’m hilarious,” Merlin says, beaming at him. 

Arthur rolls his eyes, goes back to his toast, and watches as Merlin flicks through the rest of the paper. 

“Why don’t we drive today?” Merlin says when he’s finished, and folds it down the middle. “No flat hunting, just driving around to see the place?”

They head out after they’ve tidied up, Merlin letting Arthur drive again. 

“Which way do you wanna go?” Arthur asks as they reach the end of Gwen’s street.

Merlin bumps his knees up into the dashboard. “Let’s go left.”

Arthur does. They’re familiar with some parts of the city now, having been to a few of them to look at flats, and they’re well versed around Gwen’s, but other than that there’s not much they’ve had time to check out. 

“Do you know that if people are asked to choose between left and right, 67% will pick right?” Merlin says. “I have no idea why, so don’t ask.”

“Maybe because most people are right-handed?”

“Maybe.” Merlin taps his phone to check the time. “Where do you wanna go?”

Arthur just drives, not really sure where he’s ending up. “I have no idea. Maybe we should Google some things.”

“On it.”

He has no idea where they are, but it doesn’t really matter. The area they’ve made their way into is rather nice with rows and rows of white houses that look peaceful in the midday sun. Arthur glances over at Merlin occasionally. He’s running his thumb over the screen, eyebrows drawn together. 

“You never told me what you went to uni for,” Arthur says as he turns onto another street of white, picturesque buildings. 

It dawns on him that they probably look pretty dubious rolling slowly through the streets in a rundown Ford Focus. 

Merlin looks up from his phone and smirks. “Engineering.”

“What?” Arthur stares at him. “You’ve been reciting poetry at me for months.”

Merlin laughs. “People are allowed to have hobbies, aren’t they? I mean, I love poetry, but I figure I’ll stop loving it if I have to take it apart and pick at it, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Never would’ve thought you’d study engineering, though.”

“Well, maybe you know me better than I did.” Merlin smiles crookedly at him. “Cause I guess that’s what I figured out eventually too.”

“I don’t know if I’m much better. I mean, I worked in advertising.”

“You sound excited about it,” Merlin says drily. 

“It just ended up being that way. Which I know sounds terrible. And maybe it is terrible.”

“So what do you want, then?”

Arthur looks out the window, and turns left again as they get out of the area. “No idea.”

Merlin hums, his eyes on the phone again. “Okay, take a right when you get to the next road here.”

“Where are we going?”

“Museum of Erectile Dysfunction.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I take it as a compliment that you didn’t immediately realise that I was, in fact, joking.”

“Of course you do.”

They attempt dinner at the dodgiest restaurant Arthur has ever seen.

“I’m pretty sure we’ll get food poisoning,” he mutters, picking at the dinner on his plate. 

Merlin wrinkles his nose. “It’s not impossible.” He eats anyway and Arthur looks on, a little horrified. 

“It doesn’t taste horrible,” Merlin says. “For what it’s worth.”

“I don’t know if that’s particularly comforting.”

He’d thought the place seemed cozy from the outside. It’s a little corner place they happened to stumble upon, looking quaint but comfortable. And Merlin waxed on about how it’d be one of those places you just fall into and end up going to forever. As everyone knows, those are the best places. 

This will not be one of those places. 

Just as Arthur dares to take a bite from the food, someone comes stumbling through the door, clearly drunk. He trips on a table-leg and flops down into one of the chairs.

“Joseph!” he hollers, and their server appears by his side, looking less than pleased. “The till, Joseph, get me the till.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay.” Merlin pauses with his fork in mid-air. “I think that’s the owner.”

“Oh god.”

The owner never gets the till. He promptly falls asleep, head lolling to the side.

“No,” Arthur says and when Merlin seems to protest he just says, “No” again, grabbing his jacket. 

They find a decent chip shop not far from there and Arthur is eternally grateful, even if that means they have to sit outside and it’s fucking November. As long as it’s not snowing, he can handle it. 

While Merlin goes back inside to get some napkins, Merlin’s phone rings on the bench where he’s left it and Arthur doesn’t know whether he should take it. The number isn’t saved on the phone, so Arthur has no clue who it is. It could be from one of the flats they’ve looked at, though, so he picks it up and swipes his finger across the screen. 

“Hey, this is Merlin’s phone,” he says, balancing his food on his thigh. 

“Hi, is that you, Merlin?”

“Uh, no.” Arthur seems to have forgotten how to even use phones. “This is Arthur. Merlin’s away for a sec.”

“Oh hey, mate, didn’t even hear it was you. It’s Leon.”

“Hey!” Arthur says, relieved. “How’s the romantic weekend?”

Leon laughs, not sounding even near as embarrassed as Gwen. “Fantastic. Thanks for feeding the goldfish for her.”

“ _What?_ ”

Leon breaks into laughter again. “I’m just messing with you.”

“Thank god.” Arthur looks up just as Merlin comes back and nods, pointing to the phone as if it wasn’t bleedingly obviously what he’s doing. 

“Did you answer my phone? Jesus Christ, you really need your own.”

“I agree with Merlin,” Leon says. “In fact, I’ve been trying to call you for hours cause yours was the only number I had.”

Arthur punches Merlin in the arm. “Sorry, I kind of threw it away.”

“Well, to each their own. But listen, the reason I’m calling—”

“Who is it?” Merlin asks, nibbling on a chip. 

Arthur shushes him, waving his arm for no particular reason except to shut him up. 

“Sorry,” he says to Leon. “It’s just Merlin being a dick.”

“It’s _my_ phone,” Merlin says, indignant, and grabs Arthur around the wrist.

They wrestle for the phone for a moment, Arthur only letting go when Merlin jabs him in the ribs. 

“Hi,” Merlin says, a little breathless into the phone. “Leon! How’s Gwen?”

Arthur glares at him, ignoring the gleeful smile Merlin sends him in return, and opts instead to eat his food. 

“Really? Are you serious?” Merlin looks at Arthur wide-eyed and Arthur mouths “what?”

“Thank you,” Merlin says. “Seriously, thank you. We owe you, like, a thousand favours.”

When Merlin ends the call, Arthur waits for him to say something, but he only stares at the phone. 

“What did he say?” Arthur says, impatient. 

Merlin looks up, a smile threatening to take over his entire face. “Leon has a friend who’s moving out of his flat and they’re looking for someone to take over. It’s unlisted, so they’d rather go with someone recommended to them and it’s ours if we can go meet them, like, tonight.”

“Well, fuck.” Arthur’s grin is so wide it hurts.

“Don’t you dare try to hide my tea cozy behind the mugs,” Merlin says from where he’s stacking their books into the bookshelf, one of the only pieces of furniture they invested in. (It’s hardly the most natural choice, but according to Merlin you can’t just stack books up against a wall, so bookshelf it is.)

“As long as you don’t stick my books on the bottom shelf.”

“Oh, bollocks. You’re ruining my system.”

“Either the snail goes behind the cups, or my books are upgraded from bottom shelf.”

“Fine. _Fine_. Jesus.”

“Who’s paying the rent?”

“… right now. Who’s paying the rent _right now_.”

Arthur just huffs as he continues to fill the kitchen with Merlin’s things. He’s bought a few things of his own, just so he has something to add to it. And the few things he does have with him from the infamous four cardboard boxes either go into the closet in his room or on the bookshelf in the living room. 

“Did you bring out the last stuff from the car?” Merlin asks. 

“Yeah, it’s all in the hallway.”

“Even the stuff in the boot?”

“Yep, got it all.”

Arthur looks at all their stuff together in the kitchen. It’s lined up in the cupboards and strewn haphazardly in the drawers. He can’t help but wonder if, maybe, Arthur hadn’t moved from Ealdor, they would’ve gone to uni together, getting a small flat outside campus. Maybe all of their things would’ve mixed back then, and they would’ve grown together instead of separately. 

He can’t help but feel like he’s retraced the winding path backwards and started it all over again, like they’re eighteen again and becoming flat mates, never really losing touch of each other like they had. 

But he realises that’s probably wrong of him. That’s him wishing the past never happened again, brushing it under a rug and trying to redo it when he can’t. And besides, if he’s honest with himself, he was never closest to Merlin back then. He probably would’ve gone on to live with Gwaine or Leon, and Merlin probably would have taken off on his own anyway. 

So, really, they might never have been here if it wasn’t for the past eight years. 

That’s a weird thought, because he likes this. He likes Merlin’s stupid tea cozy and the soft blanket with holes in it. He tries to imagine living here alone, building up his life all over again, all by himself, and he can’t. 

Erasing everything of Merlin’s in the new flat, there’d be four cardboard boxes worth of stuff, plus a few new kitchen appliances. But there would also be a whole lot less of Arthur. He’s not so blinded by pride that he doesn’t realise he’d get lost alone. 

“Do you hear that?” Merlin yells, unnecessarily loud.

“Hear what?” 

“That’s my stomach growling like a rabid beast and I refuse to believe you didn’t hear that somehow.”

“Oh, that’s what it was? I thought we had rats.”

“You can stand there making jokes and I’ll call for a pizza.”

“Sounds good to me,” Arthur says cheerfully, stepping back to admire his handiwork.

He only has one box left of kitchen things to put up. It’s a little hilarious how many kitchen things they have in comparison to everything else when it’s highly likely that they’ll mostly live off of take out. 

“It’ll be here in fifteen,” Merlin says, coming into the little secluded kitchen area. “My cozy!”

Arthur waves his hand with a complicated flourish. “It has the place of honour.”

“You know just how to treat a bloke, Arthur Pendragon.”

When the pizza comes, they settle on the floor of the living room with the box open between them. Merlin is furiously defending the choice to get the bookshelf instead of the sofa, and Arthur finds he doesn’t really mind. 

Merlin looks… well, lighter is probably the right word. He looks about as light as Arthur has ever seen him. He smiles easily, his eyes flittering around the room every so often. 

“I can’t believe we finally got one,” he says suddenly, barely swallowing first. “Like, I was seriously concerned there for a while.”

Arthur wipes his hand on his jeans. “I told you it’d work out.”

“Yeah, I guess you did. None too kindly, I might add.”

“Merlin,” Arthur starts, but Merlin laughs.

“Stop wherever you’re going with that. You were all kinds of right.” 

“Still.”

Merlin hums around the last piece of his pizza slice. The silence falls between them while he swallows and Merlin is the one to speak again. 

“I enrolled in uni,” he says and Arthur snaps to attention, staring at him. “Here in Glasgow.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I know right? I thought a lot about it after that day, you know. And I don’t want to run from this. We made this decision, to come here, and I wanna stick to it. So I enrolled for the spring semester.”

Arthur’s heart jumps into his throat and he can’t quite swallow properly. 

“Back to engineering?” he asks, trying to sound unaffected. 

“Nope.” Merlin reaches for another slice. “Sign language. I’ve always kind of wanted to learn it and maybe do interpreting. So why not, right?”

“It’s brilliant.” Arthur grins. He can’t stop it. He’s like that a lot more these days. “I’m glad you are.”

“Thanks. I’m still gonna find extra work to do, I swear. I won’t skip on rent.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Shut up, I’m not living here for free.”

“Fine.” Arthur won’t argue about something as dumb as that. Merlin can do what he wants, Arthur doesn’t really mind either way. “I thought a lot after that day too.”

“Yeah?”

“I got a phone.” 

Merlin’s eyes go wide as Arthur picks it out of his pocket. 

“I got it yesterday. So far the only people in it are you, Morgana, Gwen and Leon.” He runs a thumb over the screen, still anxious over being reachable, even by the people he doesn’t want to talk to. “I called Lance, this guy from work, yesterday. Just to apologise for running off. And I’ll probably call Uther too, at some point.”

“I’m so proud of you,” Merlin says, as he lowers his half-eaten slice. “You have no idea.”

Arthur meets his gaze and shrugs before peering down at the phone again, oddly vulnerable about the whole thing. It’s such a minor detail when it comes down to it, but he’s reachable again. He’s in touch with the people around him – no longer off the grid. 

And that counts for something.

On the second night after they’ve officially moved in, they go out to a club just down the street and Arthur is nearly floored by the crowd and the loudness of it. It’s the sounds of the city again, of the people and the music and the things that _happen_.

Merlin dances, uninhibited, even if neither of them have bothered to drink before coming. It doesn’t seem to matter. The atmosphere sucks them in. Arthur’s not much of a dancer, but he watches as Merlin moves on the floor. 

He goes over there eventually when some guy gets too close and Merlin keeps batting him away. 

“Where’s Gwen?” He leans close to whisper into Merlin’s ear. 

“Up by the bar.” Merlin puts his hand on Arthur’s shoulders to brace himself. “She got here a little bit ago.”

He looks over and Gwen catches their attention with a wave. They wave back, but she turns away to talk to someone by the bar. Arthur dances. Or, well, he moves with the music, letting Merlin guide him a little with a hand on his back, and then on his shoulder and at one memorable moment on his hip. 

It doesn’t take long before Gwen catches their attention again, and motions them towards her. 

“Elena,” she says when they find her, “this is Arthur, man with pub working experience. Arthur, this is Elena, hiring club owner.”

Arthur shakes the hand of a grinning woman with wild, blonde hair. She bounces lightly on her feet. “Thank god, I’ve been looking for someone for ages. Give me your number and I’ll call.”

And so, they might owe Gwen a whole fucking lot. They do. Forever indebted, probably. But she doesn’t seem to care about that right now as she drags them off to dance.

On the fourth night after they’ve officially moved in, Merlin stands in the doorway to Arthur’s bedroom, the light from the hallway bright behind him. Arthur groans, turning over to stab his fingers at his phone just to find out that it’s 2 a.m.

“What’re you doin’ here,” he says, barely able to shape his lips to make words. 

“Sorry,” Merlin says, quiet. “I’ll go.”

“No,” Arthur finally manages to say. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s _wrong_ , really.”

Arthur sits up. He probably looks ridiculous with his hair standing up in every direction. He tries to smooth it down and becomes intensely aware that he’s not wearing a T-shirt because he never does when he’s on his own. 

The light from the hallway frames Merlin’s shape in the door, the backlight making him a shadowy silhouette, and it’s impossible to make out his face. 

“This is stupid, I’m sorry,” Merlin says, a little strangled. “Go back to sleep.”

Arthur blames the fact that he’s only half-awake when he says, “No. Stay.”

Merlin stands completely still for a moment before he steps inside and closes the door behind him. He stops between the bed and the door, apparently not sure what to do with himself. 

“Did you have another nightmare?” Arthur rubs a hand over his face, trying to wake himself up. 

Merlin shakes his head. “Not a really bad one, anyway.”

When Arthur just looks at him, waiting for him to talk, Merlin becomes restless and shifts in place, crossing his arms over his naked chest. 

“God, wow. This was a terrible idea. We just moved in together and here I am on a mission to make it super awkward. Well done me.” Merlin gnaws at his lip, eyes on the floor. “Uhm, the bed is really weird. Because I’m in it alone. And I guess I got kind of used to sharing with you. And now I can’t really sleep, I guess, which I know is fucking stupid, but I just—”

“C’mere,” Arthur says, voice rough with sleep. 

He can’t be bothered to stop and think about it or analyse it or worry about it. 

Which is a first.

He throws the cover aside, trying not to stare openly as Merlin moves slowly towards the bed and climbs in. He’s wearing his grey jogging bottoms again, but they hang low and Arthur is pretty sure he can see the grooves of Merlin’s hips over the waist of them as Merlin slides in. 

They lie on their sides, facing each other. Arthur can try to tell himself it’s the same as when they shared the bed at Gwen’s, but it’s not. He _wants_ Merlin to stay here, to wake up next to Arthur all warm with sleep, his hair ruffled. He wants the closeness and the comfort. And he wants something else too, something that he can’t find the words for. 

His eyes follow the shape of Merlin’s face, from his eyelashes to his cheekbones, to his lips, and his jaw. The feeling in his chest scares him, because he recognises it. It’s not that he’s never had feelings for a guy before, because that’s happened once or twice without it going anywhere in particular, but it’s the feelings part in general that makes him want to bury himself into the bed and stay there. 

“I’m so fucked,” Merlin says, voice quiet as he closes his eyes. “So seriously fucked.”

Arthur’s breath catches in his throat, because he’s not stupid. He can do simple addition, and Merlin showing up to sleep in his bed while looking at him like that, plus the frustration in his voice… that definitely equals something. 

He traces his fingers over Merlin’s throat, finding the point where his pulse runs fast and Merlin’s eyes fly open, looking at him in shock. Arthur cups the side of his neck, and skims his thumb over the cut of Merlin’s jaw. He enjoys the way the slight stubble prickles under his skin. 

Merlin’s lips part in surprise, his eyes large and hesitant. The red of his mouth catches Arthur’s attention, making his heart race because he’s considering it now, not just in an abstract way. Even if he doesn’t want to take it back, the thought of making the step is still overwhelming. 

Arthur’s scrutiny makes Merlin lick his lips, his tongue leaving them wet and glistening, and the sight punches Arthur straight in the gut. He leans in, so close that he can no longer see Merlin’s face properly and Merlin’s breath fans across his lips. He thinks of that night in Manchester and the closeness he’d felt just with Merlin sharing the smoke with him. Now that doesn’t feel nearly close enough. 

He looks up to find Merlin’s eyes closed, and for some reason that makes it easier. Arthur angles Merlin’s head upwards with a thumb under his jaw, and brushes their lips together, listening to the hitch of Merlin’s breath. When Merlin opens his lips, pressing into the kiss, Arthur closes his eyes too and lets the feeling of Merlin kissing him fill him up from the inside. 

It’s been a long time since he responded to his senses instead of his thoughts and his mind overflows with impressions. The tip of Merlin’s tongue runs over his upper lip and slowly opens the kiss into something more, something deeper that sends little jolts of sensation through Arthur’s nerves. 

A low sound comes from the back of Merlin’s throat as he gingerly places his hand on Arthur’s ribs, fingers splaying out and pressing into his skin, tighter and tighter as if he’s slowly making sure Arthur is real. 

Arthur relaxes into the bed while Merlin runs his tongue over the roof of his mouth. His mind is cloudy and unfocused, only able to zero in on the way the hairs at the nape of his neck stand up, how Merlin’s hand runs down his side and makes his skin feel alive. 

Everything suddenly comes together – all the feelings and sensations, the longing to be even closer bursting open in his chest. He puts an arm around Merlin, pulls him in and kisses him like he’s going to find all the answers there. Merlin follows his lead immediately and throws one leg over Arthur’s hip to get them closer. 

Arthur makes a breathy sound and his lungs scream for more air as he presses their lips together in a messy kiss. It’s like he’s being pulled apart and put back together with every swipe of Merlin’s tongue. 

It’s only when he physically can’t keep going that he pulls away, and looks at Merlin’s kiss-red lips parted over his laboured breath. Arthur leans in and buries his face into Merlin’s neck, skims his fingers over the muscles in Merlin’s back, and feels his lungs expand. 

Arthur is so hard he could probably come if he pushed his hips against Merlin just a few times, but it feels too soon. His chest is already bursting over the kiss, and his skin burns under Merlin’s hands where they ghost over his body without lingering anywhere in particular. He doesn’t think he can handle anything else right now.

They just touch, softly and slowly, until they fall asleep.

Arthur jumps out of his skin when the phone buzzes on the floor next to him. There’s no denying he still prefers when he’s the one calling rather than being surprised by the incessant buzz.

Merlin keeps sarcastically reminding him that it’s no longer the 80s and phones have caller display. 

Which is probably a good point. 

He leans on his elbow to reach the phone and drags it closer only to find Morgana’s name lighting the display. 

Merlin pads around in the kitchen as Tuesdays are Merlin’s day to make dinner. Arthur briefly considers not picking up so he can stay on the floor with his back against the wall, surrounded only by the smell of food and the nearby sounds of someone who matters. 

He picks up anyway. 

“Are you ever gonna come get your car?” 

“Hello, Morgana.”

“Hey, Arthur,” she says, suppressed laughter apparent in her voice. “Wow, it’s nice to hear from you, but I mean, don’t ring the place down.”

“Well, I’m just getting back into this phone business. Give me some credit.”

He shifts on the floor to get comfortable when Merlin pokes his head out from the kitchen. His hair is sticking up at the back. There’s flour all over his shirt and on his chin. 

He mouths _Morgana_ before he realises he’s missed half of what she said. 

“Sorry?”

“Seriously, Arthur, the least you can do is listen if you won’t call.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I’m terrible, et cetera.”

She huffs out a laugh. “I was asking you again when you’re coming to get your car.”

“You can keep it.”

“What do I need that ridiculous car for?”

“Sell it, then.”

“I despair of you.”

Arthur smiles, bends his knees up to his chest and looks out over the mostly empty living room. 

“How’s the pub?” he says.

“Good. Really good. Honestly better than I thought it’d be.”

“And Uther?”

“Also better than I thought, considering you just moved to another country.” There’s the slam of a door on the other end. “He came to visit, actually. I don’t know if he did it to make sure I haven’t messed everything up, though.”

“He’s probably trying.”

“Yeah.”

He lets the silence sit for a little before he says, “I got a job. Just barwork, but–”

“That’s brilliant, you know. No such thing as ‘just’ barwork. It’s an artform, really.”

“Look, I gotta go,” Arthur says when Merlin comes out of the kitchen with a plate in each hand and the smudge of flour still on his chin. “Dinner’s ready.”

“Alright. Good talk.” The sarcasm is barely concealed and he rolls his eyes. 

“ _Bye_ , Morgana.”

Merlin drops down next to him and passes him a plate. “We seriously need to work on your phone skills.”

“How was your first shift?”

Arthur hangs up his coat and kicks off his shoes. He shakes the snow from his hair, runs his fingers through it and shakes the moisture from his hands. “Terrifying.”

“Damn, it’s snowing?” Merlin jumps up from his seat on the floor. 

“Not anymore. Stopped while I was walking from the bus stop.”

“I told you to take Johan,” Merlin says, and moves away from the window. 

Arthur lowers himself onto the floor where he stretches out and takes note of his aching muscles. 

“No proper parking space. And, fuck, what I’d give for a sofa right now.”

Merlin looks at him, sheepish. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Arthur says, unable to hide a slight wince. 

Merlin had already realised his mistake a while ago. “I have made a grave error,” he’d announced as he eyed the bookshelf. “I realise you can’t exactly fuck someone on a shelf. A sofa would probably have been the better purchase.” But it had been fine, really, because it turns out you can fuck someone on a floor too. Even if it was Arthur’s back that had ended up taking the worst of it as Merlin rode him, his breath coming out in stuttering little gasps.

Arthur shifts on the floor. “We can buy one when I get my first paycheck.” 

“Oh my god, I feel horrible. Come here.”

Merlin drags him closer. He fusses until Arthur sits between his legs with his back against Merlin’s chest. Pressing his lips to the top of Arthur’s head, he pulls him close and wraps his arms around him. 

“Why was it terrifying?”

“Busy. Loud. Everything’s new.” Arthur relaxes as Merlin’s hands splay out over his chest. 

Merlin hums. “It’ll get easier.”

“Maybe.” 

Merlin pulls away a little, but just enough to massage Arthur’s shoulders, his fingers amazing and painful at the same time against his muscles. “Spill it.”

“What?” Arthur says, a little faraway, his focus almost solely on Merlin’s fingers rubbing at his sore spots. 

He winces a little under the touch, but Merlin just keeps going. 

“I know something’s bothering you, so you should just tell me or I’ll never shut up about it.”

Arthur groans, partly because he doesn’t want to talk about it and partly because Merlin’s hit a particularly painful spot. 

“I just don’t know if working in a bar is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

To his surprise, Merlin lets out a laugh, and his breath ghosts over Arthur’s neck. He tries to pull away, feeling stupid, but Merlin holds him in place.

“Sorry,” Merlin says, his voice still a little amused. “It’s just… just because you’re working in a club right now doesn’t mean you have to do it forever. I mean, fuck, we’re twenty-five, Arthur. I think we’re allowed to figure out what we want to do with our lives.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“No, you don’t guess. I’m right. You know I am. Always am.”

“Like you were about the bookshelf?” 

“Okay, I may make the occasional error in judgement, but you should be gracious enough to allow me that.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything, he just closes his eyes and sinks back into the now softer touches of Merlin’s hands. He’s exhausted, and he’s coming home to a flat where he has to sit on the floor, but he hasn’t felt this centred and calm in a long time. The uneasiness under his skin has gone, replaced by a calmness that seeps into his bones. 

“Did you know,” Arthur says, his words a little slurred, “that if you layer two phone books together, page by page, you can’t get them apart? It’s nearly impossible.”

“Yeah,” Merlin says against his ear, amused. “I did know that.”

“I feel like that’s us.”

Merlin’s hands still on his shoulders.

“And even though there’s eight years worth of pages where our lives separated, I feel like the pages still layered together, building until we were ready to meet again.”

Merlin leans forward as he circles his arms around Arthur’s neck, pressing their cheeks together. “I think I love you.”

The breath rushes out of Arthur so fast he becomes dizzy, and Merlin’s arms tighten around him. 

“You don’t have to say it back.” Merlin’s voice is quiet. “I know you’re not ready for that, and I don’t know, maybe you’ll never be, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. And I know it probably terrifies the fuck out of you, but I want you to know anyway.”

Arthur doesn’t say it back, because he can’t. He’s not ready. He might feel the same, he doesn’t know right now; everything when it comes to love is too messy in his head to make sense of. Even if he knew, he’d be terrified of saying it out loud in case it ruins everything. Again. 

The nice thing is that it doesn’t matter. Their pages are still layered.

He loves when his cock is as deep inside Merlin as it can go, and Merlin is tight and hot and shivering around him. He loves the eager little noises Merlin makes when Arthur spreads him open, and fucks him until they’re both incoherent and lost. It’s unbearably hot and addictive when he pushes into him, first the head of his cock and then the rest, and Merlin gives way to him.. Merlin’s legs hook around him as they rock together and it’s more amazing than Arthur would’ve ever imagined.

But this… this, too, makes his brain melt into an incoherent mess. He can’t keep silent when Merlin works him open with two finger as he holds him down against the kitchen counter (because they still don’t have a sofa). His exhales are loud, sometimes ending on a moan under Merlin’s long fingers, slick and warm, moving inside him. 

His cock has gone soft from the intrusion, but he reaches down and circles it until it hardens slowly in his hand as Merlin places soft, open kisses against the small of his back. 

His mind always goes blank when he accommodates Merlin’s cock: when he fits himself around it until it touches him everywhere, fills all of him from the inside out. And when Merlin moves, his mind bursts with all of the impressions at once, making him cry out. 

The fingers on his free hand grab against the counter, his forehead pressed against it as he pushes himself back against Merlin. 

“Jesus, Arthur, _yes_.” Merlin braces himself with both hands on Arthur’s back as he fucks into him, slow at first, but then faster, hitting a pace where Arthur can’t catch a proper breath. 

Arthur can’t find the co-ordination to jerk himself off anymore, but it doesn’t really matter because his cock is filling now and hardens when Merlin hits that spot inside him that makes him shake. 

He loves the way his mind is lost, blocked out by the haze of arousal and the sensations that just consume everything else. He’s finally letting go of his mind when they’re together. It doesn’t matter if Merlin is fucking him stupid or if he’s buried so deep inside Merlin that he can’t feel anything else. All of it leaves him lost in the moment, blind to anything else, and it’s perfect. 

“Fuck, you don’t know how you feel.” Merlin bends down and mouths at his shoulder, his thrusts slowing. “Oh my god.”

Arthur uses his hands for leverage, pushes himself up until they’re almost standing, and reaches one hand behind him to pull Merlin closer. He sets the pace that Merlin can do nothing but follow. Merlin just laughs, breathless, and follows his lead, his hands splayed out over Arthur’s chest and stomach.

Arthur throws his head back against Merlin’s shoulders when he comes. He loses track of everything but the pleasure, and he loves that moment, that moment when it’s nothing but pleasure that’s almost too hard to handle and the feeling of Merlin around him.

“This is, uh, very nice,” Elena says as she looks out over the very sparsely decorated living room. “Very… homely.”

Merlin laughs and gestures at the floor where Leon and Gwen are already sitting. “Take a seat. Anywhere is fine.”

“Apparently I need to pay you more,” she mutters to Arthur. 

“I told you we should’ve waited until we bought the sofa,” Arthur says when the doorbell rings again. 

The first time it rang that evening they’d thought the building was on fire, because they’d never really tried the bell before. And it’s a terrifying, bone-chilling sound. Arthur is pretty sure he has to ask everyone to never, ever use it again. 

“You get it,” Merlin says. “I need to find a spot for Elena’s housewarming gift.”

“May I suggest the bookshelf?”

Merlin glares at him. “Stop ruining the fun.”

Outside the door are Morgana and Gwaine, who both beam at him when he opens the door wide. 

“Look who I found outside!” Morgana says. “And it’s a good thing too, he had no idea where he was going.”

Gwaine pulls him into a hug, slapping him so hard on the back that Arthur nearly starts to cough. “Banging place,” he says as he moves further inside. 

The living room erupts into loud chatter and yelling. 

“Hey,” he says over the noise. 

Morgana hugs him, longer than usual, her arms tight around his shoulders. When she moves away, she pulls a face. “Stop, you’re making me sentimental.”

“I’m not doing anything,” he says and laughs.

“You’re doing plenty.”

The living room is still chaotic when they enter. 

“Did you see who made it?” Merlin says, gesturing wildly towards Gwaine. 

“Yes, I did let him in, Merlin.”

“You’re not near excited enough,” Gwaine says. 

Arthur reaches over and cuffs him upside the head. “I’m excited enough.”

Morgana gives a long-suffering sigh, thrusting a wrapped present at Merlin. “Of course the two of you don’t even have anything to sit on.”

“We invested in the bookshelf.”

“Of course you did.”

Merlin sits down, cross-legged, next to Gwaine. “We do have a spare bedroom, though, so you guys can come visit anytime! It has a bed, I promise.”

“I’m glad you clarified about the bed because I honestly wasn’t sure you’d have one,” Morgana says. 

Leon looks over at him, his hand on Gwen’s knee. “I thought this was a two bedroom flat?”

“It is.” Merlin beams. 

It’s quiet for a moment until Gwaine says, “Alright!” and thumps Merlin so hard on the back that he nearly falls forwards. 

Morgana hugs him again.

“It’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.”

“Really, Merlin? That’s the most beautiful thing you’ve _ever_ seen?”

“It’s flawless.”

“Really.”

“A piece of art.”

“Just… shut up and sit down.”

Merlin looks like Arthur just suggested a ritual murder. “I can’t sit on it!” 

“That’s kind of what it’s made for.”

“I’d rather just look. Really soak in its perfection.”

Merlin squawks indignantly when Arthur manages to unbalance him and tip him onto the sofa. Splaying out over it, he gives Arthur a look that reads betrayal. 

Arthur just grins. 

It doesn’t take long until Merlin forgets to sulk. He sits up and bounces a little, up and down on the couch, before he splays himself out in different positions to find the best one. Arthur has to wedge himself between Merlin and the armrest despite Merlin’s protests. In the end, he ends up with Merlin’s head in his lap. 

“This was a good buy,” Merlin says, and wiggles his toes against the armrest on the other side. 

Humming, Arthur props his feet up on the table and opens a book he picked from the bookshelf. 

There’s a hushed atmosphere now that they’ve settled down. It’s the sort of quiet that only comes with the steady snowfall outside that hasn’t let up in two days. Arthur doesn’t know when silence stopped making his thoughts race, but now it just makes him relax into the cushions, his head resting against the back of the sofa. 

It’s only when he moves to flip the page that he notices Merlin looking at him intently, his mouth pulled up at the corner. 

Arthur pauses, his voice quiet as he says, “What?” 

“Nothing.” 

Merlin turns over on his side and nuzzles his cheek against Arthur’s thigh.

“I love you,” Arthur says, safe in the knowledge that it won’t ruin anything at all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings: Minor canonical character death and grief, past Arthur/Sophia (divorce).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for "Like Clouds In Starlight Widely Spread" by ingberry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/956112) by [Emjayelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjayelle/pseuds/Emjayelle)




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